A Book of Seasons: there is that time about the first of June - Waving grasses, Buttercups, and Shade

 Each season is but an infinitesimal point.

It no sooner comes than it is gone.

It has no duration …

Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting

Henry Thoreau, June 6, 1857

There is that time about the first of June,

the beginning of summer,

when the buttercups blossom in the now luxuriant grass

and I am first reminded of mowing and of the dairy.

June, 1850

They say of the 19th of April, '75, that

"the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields"

May 19, 1860

To be present with these virgin shades of the year – the birth of shadow. June 2, 1854

*****

April 25.  It is a sudden impression of greater genialness in the air, when this greenness first makes an impression on you . . . It reminds you of the time, not far off, when you will see the dark shadows of the trees there and buttercups spotting the grass. Even the grass begins to wave, in the 19th-of-April fashion . . . and I am suddenly advertised that a new season has arrived . . . that season which, methinks, culminates with the buttercup and wild pink. April 25, 1859

May 14. The dark bluish-green of that rye, already beginning to wave. May 14, 1853

May 15.  Yellow is the color of spring; red, of midsummer. Through pale golden and green we arrive at the yellow of the buttercup; through scarlet, to the fiery July red, the red lily. May 15, 1853

May 15.  The springing sorrel, the expanding leafets, the already waving rye tell of June.  May 15, 1860 

May 19. The grass, especially the meadow-grasses, are seen to wave distinctly, and the shadows of the bright fair-weather cumuli are sweeping over them.  May 19, 1860

May 21.  Noticed the shadows of apple trees yesterday. May 21, 1860

May 22. The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind . . . I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into summer.  May 22, 1853

May 23.  And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season . . . I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July. May 23, 1853

May 24.   I notice the first shadows of hickories, – not dense and dark shade, but open-latticed, a network of sun and shadow on the north sides of the trees. May 24, 1860

May 26.   At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, winter recedes many degrees in my memory . . . The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant. May 26, 1854

May 27. The fields now begin to wear the aspect of June, their grass just beginning to wave. May 27, 1855

May 27.  A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade.. . . The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain. May 27, 1853

May 28. The buttercups spot the churchyard. May 28, 1851

May 28.  These various shades of grass remind me of June. May 28, 1858

May 29. The sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June. May 29, 1857

May 30.  Now is the summer come . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave. May 30, 1852

May 30.  Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard.  May 30, 1857

May 31.  Pink, common wild, maybe two or three days. May 31, 1856

June 2.  Buttercups now spot the churchyard. June 2, 1852

June 2.   The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them. June 2, 1852

June 2. These virgin shades of the year, when everything is tender, fresh and green, — how full of promise! I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. June 2, 1854

June 3. I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time . . . It might have been noticed before. June 3, 1851

June 4. Dark shadows on field and wood are the more remarkable by contrast with the light yellow-green foliage now, and when they rest on evergreens they are doubly dark, like dark rings about the eyes of June. June 4, 1855

June 4. Most trees now [make]a grateful but thin shade, like a coarse sieve, so open that we see the fluttering of each leaf in its shadow . . . In a week or more the twigs will have so extended themselves, and the number of fully expanded leaves be so increased, that the trees will look heavy and dark with foliage and the shadow be dark and opaque. June 4, 1860

June 5. This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. June 5, 1856

June 5.  The first of June, when the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the summer is begun according to the clock of the seasons. June 5, 1850

June 6. You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land,  June 6, 1855

June 6.  This is June, the month of grass and leaves. June 6, 1857

June 7. The trees having leaved out, you notice their rounded tops, suggesting shade. June 7, 1858

June 8.   Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams then is summer begun. June 8, 1850

June 9.  The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.  The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver.  June 9, 1852 

June 9. The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup. June 9, 1853 

June 9. Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath.  It suggests . . . the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. June 9, 1856

June 10. Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. June 10, 1853

June 11.  I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground . . .It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. June 11, 1856

June 11.  No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute differences in the seasons.  A book of the seasons, each page of which should be written in its own season and out-of-doors, or in its own locality wherever it may be. June 11, 1851

*****

June 2, 2018

All nature is a new impression every instant. 

May 23, 1841

I cannot count one.

I know not the first letter

of the alphabet.

See also :

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apple Blossom Time

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Waving grasses, Buttercups, and Shade

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

https://tinyurl.com/HDTshade

Now is the time for meadow walking.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

4.30 A. M. -To the river.

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. So they are dispersed.

The heart-leaf flower is abundant more than ever, but shut up at this hour.

The first lily I noticed opened about half an hour after sunrise, or at 5 o'clock.

The Polygonum hydropiperoides, I think it is, now in blossom in the mud by the river.

Morning-glories are in perfection now, some dense masses of this vine with very red flowers, very attractive and cool-looking in dry mornings. They are very tender and soon defaced in a nosegay.

The large orange lily with sword-shaped leaves, strayed from cultivation, by the roadside beyond the stone bridge.

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day, thus showing a preference for that portion of the day.

P. M. — To Conantum.

The wind makes it rather more comfortable to-day.

That small globose white flower with glossy radical leaves is common now on the muddy shore of the river.

The fishes' nests are left high and dry, and I perceive that they are distinctly hollowed, five or six inches deep, in the sand, i. e. below the surrounding surface.

Here are some which still contain their panful of water, but are no longer connected with the river. They have a distinct raised edge of sand about one and a half inches high and three or four wide.

The lilies I have tried in water this warmest weather have wilted the first day. Only the water can produce and sustain such flowers. Those which are left high and dry, or even in very shallow water, are wont to have a dwarfed growth.

The Victoria lily is a water flower.

The river is low. 

Now is the time for meadow walking. (I am in the meadow north of Hubbard's Bridge.) You go dry-shod now through meadows which were comparatively impassable before, —- those western reserves which you had not explored. We are thankful that the water has preserved them inviolate so long.

There is a cheerful light reflected from the undersides of the ferns in the drier meadows now, and has been for some time, especially in breezy weather.

It was so in June.

The dusty roads and roadsides begin to show the effects of drouth.

The corn rolls.

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. It probably commenced about the 9th. Its flowers are conspicuous for a tree, and a rather agreeable odor fills the air. The tree resounds with the hum of bees on the flowers. On the whole it is a rich sight.

Is it not later than the chestnut?

The elder is a very conspicuous and prevalent flower now, with its large flat cymes.

Pogonias and calopogons are very abundant in the meadows. They are interesting, if only for their high color.

Any redness is, after all, rare and precious. It is the color of our blood. The rose owes its preëminence in great measure to its color. It is said to be from the Celtic rhos, red. It is nature's most precious color.

Impatiens fulva, by Corner Spring.

I hear often nowadays the kingbird's chattering twitter.

As you walk under oaks, you perceive from time to time a considerable twig come gently falling to the ground, whose stem has been weakened by a worm, and here and there lie similar twigs whose leaves are now withered and changed.

How valuable and significant is shade now! Trees appear valuable for shade mainly, and we observe their shadows as much as their form and foliage.

The waving of the meadow-grass near Fair Haven Isle is very agreeable and refreshing to one looking down from an elevation. It appears not merely like a waving or undulation, but a progress, a creeping, as of an invisible army, over it, its flat curly head.

The grass appears tufted, watered.

On the river the ripple is continued into the pads, where it is smoother,-- a longer undulation.

Pines or evergreens do not attract so much attention now. They have retired on the laurels of the winter campaign.

What is called genius is the abundance of life or health, so that whatever addresses the senses, as the flavor of these berries, or the lowing of that cow, which sounds as if it echoed along a cool mountain-side just before night, where odoriferous dews perfume the air and there is everlasting vigor, serenity, and expectation of perpetual untarnished morning, — each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication.  The shrunken stream of life overflows its banks, makes and fertilizes broad intervals, from which generations derive their sustenances.

This is the true overflowing of the Nile. 

So exquisitely sensitive are we, it makes us embrace our fates, and, instead of suffering or indifference, we enjoy and bless. If we have not dissipated the vital, the divine, fluids, there is, then, a circulation of vitality beyond our bodies. The cow is nothing. Heaven is not there, but in the condition of the hearer.

I am thrilled to think that I owe a perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that these berries have fed my brain. After I had been eating these simple, wholesome, ambrosial fruits on this high hillside, I found my senses whetted, I was young again, and whether I stood or sat I was not the same creature.

The yellow lily is not open-petalled like the red, nor is its flower upright, but drooping. On the whole I am most attracted by the red. They both make freckles beautiful.

Fragrances must not be overpowering, however sweet. I love the sweet fragrance of melilot.

The Circæa alpina, enchanter's-nightshade, by Corner Spring, low, weed-like, somewhat like touch-me-not leaves. Was it not the C. Lutetiana (a larger plant) that I found at Saw Mill Brook?


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1852

The shore is strewn with quite a long grove of young red maples two inches high, with the samaræ attached. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

It is a sufficient reason for walking in the forenoon sometimes that some flowers shut up at noon and do not open again during the day. See June 20, 1853 (" Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut."); July 1, 1852 ("After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day.")

The bass on Conantum is now well in blossom. See July 16, 1852 ("The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, . . . The tree resounds with the hum of bees, — bumblebees and honey-bees ; rose-bugs and butterflies, also, are here, — a perfect susurrus, a sound, as C. says, unlike any other in nature, — not like the wind, as that is like the sea. . . . The air is full of sweetness. The tree is full of poetry.");. July 17, 1854 ("I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many"); . July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars"); July 18, 1854 (" We have very few bass trees in Concord, but walk near them at this season and they will be betrayed, though several rods off, by the wonderful susurrus of the bees, etc., which their flowers attract. It is worth going a long way to hear. ") Compare June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”); June 21, 1853 (There are no flowers nor flower-buds on the bass this year, though it was so full last year.""); June 30, 1852 ("The bass tree is budded"); July 3, 1853("There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year."); July 4, 1853 ("The bass appears now — or a few trees — to have bloomed here and there prematurely."); July 9, 1857 (“I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”); and see also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Now is the time for meadow walking. See August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go."); August 21, 1859 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet.."); June 26, 1860 ("You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.") Compare July 10, 1852 (“I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. It seems the properest highway for this weather."); January 20, 1856 ("Here, where you cannot walk at all in the summer, is better walking than elsewhere in the winter.")

Whatever addresses the senses . . . each sight and sound and scent and flavor, — intoxicates with a healthy intoxication. See  July 16, 1851 ("To have such sweet impressions made on us,. . . This is a pleasure, a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.");   August 3, 1852 ("By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody."); December 11, 1855 ("My body is all sentient. As I go here or there, I am tickled by this or that I come in contact with, as if I touched the wires of a battery."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world; Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”)

The birth of shadow.

May 28.

The trees now begin to shade the streets. When the sun gets high in the sky the trees give shade. With oppressive heats come refreshing shadows.

The buttercups spot the churchyard.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 28, 1851

The trees now begin to shade the streets. See June 2, 1854 ("These virgin shades of the year, when everything is tender, fresh and green, — how full of promise! I would fain be present at the birth of shadow. It takes place with the first expansion of the leaves."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”) See also ("I got to-day and yesterday the first decided impression of greenness beginning to prevail, summer-like. . . .It reminds you of the time, not far off, when you will see the dark shadows of the trees there and buttercups spotting the grass.") May 28, 1858 (“These various shades of grass remind me of June.”); May 30, 1852 (Now is the summer come. . . . A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave.”)

The buttercups spot the churchyard. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. . . . The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain."); May 30, 1857 ("Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard.")

May 28. SeeA Book of the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, May 28

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2021

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

October 13.

October 13, 2021

Drizzling, misty showers still, with a little misty sunshine at intervals.

The trees have lost many of their leaves in the last twenty-four hours.

The sun has got so low that it will do to let his rays in on the earth; the cattle do not need their shade now, nor men. Warmth is more desirable now than shade.

The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer.

• In summer the animal and vegetable in him are perfected as in a torrid zone; he lives in his senses mainly.
• In winter cold reason and not warm passion has her sway; he lives in thought and reflection; he lives a more spiritual, a less sensual, life.
• If he has passed a merely sensual summer, he passes his winter in a torpid state like some reptiles and other animals.
• The mind of man in the two seasons is like the atmosphere of summer compared with the atmosphere of winter.
• He depends more on himself in winter, — on his own resources, — less on outward aid.
• Insects, it is true, disappear for the most part, and those animals which depend upon them; but the nobler animals abide with man the severity of winter.
• He migrates into his mind, to perpetual summer.
• And to the healthy man the winter of his discontent never comes.

Mr. Pratt told me that Jonas? Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately near Beck Stow's swamp with twenty-five pounds of honey in it, in the top of a maple tree which was blown down.

There is now a large swarm in the meeting-house chimney, in a flue not used.

Many swarms have gone off that have not been heard from.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 13, 1851

Man in winter. See December 8, 1850 ( "The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!"); October 27, 1851 ("The cold numbs my fingers. Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think."); January 17, 1852 ("In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. That is the symbol of the unclouded mind that knows neither winter nor summer ") April 1, 1852 ("We have had a good solid winter, which has put the previous summer far behind us; intense cold, deep and lasting snows, and clear, tense winter sky. It is a good experience to have gone through with."); January 30, 1854 ("The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of man's brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. This harvest of thought the great harvest of the year. The human brain is the kernel which the winter itself matures. Now we burn with a purer flame like the stars."); December 5, 1856 ("I love the winter, with its imprisonment and its cold,"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter, with its snow and ice, . . . is as it was designed and made to be.")

Melvin found a honey-bee's nest lately. See February 10, 1852 ("I saw yesterday on the snow on the ice, on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, some hundreds of honey-bees,. . .. Pratt says he would advise me to remove the dead bees, lest somebody else should be led to discover their retreat, and I may get five dollars for the swarm, and perhaps a good deal of honey."); September 30, 1852 ("custom gives the first finder of the nest a right to the honey and to cut down the tree "). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees

October 13. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 13

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past

May 11. 

May 11, 2019

The river no lower than yesterday. 

Warbling vireo. 

2 P. M. — 77º. Very warm. To factory village. 

Redstart. 

Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. 

I see at Damon’s Spring some dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres much more at Clamshell the 13th). It is ripe, then, several days, or say just before elm seed, but the mouse-ear not on the 13th anywhere. 

The senecio shows its yellow. 

The warmth makes us notice the shade of houses and trees (even before the last have leafed) falling on the greened banks, as Harrington’s elm and house. June-like. 

See some large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. 

The Ranunculus abortivus well out; say five days? 

Red cherry in bloom, how long? 

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. 

William Brown’s nursery is now white (fine white) with the shepherd’s-purse, some twelve to eighteen inches high, covering it under his small trees, like buck wheat, though not nearly so white as that. I never saw so much. It also has green pods. Say it is in prime. 

E. Hosmer, as a proof that the river has been lower than now, says that his father, who was born about the middle of the last century, used to tell of a time, when he was a boy, when the river just below Derby’s Bridge did not run, and he could cross it dry-shod on the rocks, the water standing in pools when Conant’s mill (where the factory now is) was not running. 

I noticed the place to-day, and, low as the river is for the season, it must be at least a foot and a half deep there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 11, 1860

 Red-wings do not fly in flocks for ten days past, I think. See April 30, 1855 ("Red-wing blackbirds now fly in large flocks, covering the tops of trees—willows, maples, apples, or oaks—like a black fruit , and keep up an incessant gurgling and whistling");  May 5, 1859 ("Red-wings fly in flocks yet."). May 13, 1860 ("Red wings are evidently busy building their nests.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Red-wing in  Early Spring

Dandelion seeds all blown away, and other perfectly ripe spheres. See May 9, 1858 ("A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.")

The senecio shows its yellow. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July.")

Large black birch stumps all covered with pink scum from the sap. See April 26, 1856 ("The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. Is not this the only birch which shows this colored froth?")

The Ranunculus abortivus [Kidneyleaf Crowfoot] well out; say five days? See May 16, 1859 ("Ranunculus abortivus well out (when?), southwest angle of Damon's farm.");May 25, 1858 ("See an abundance of Ranunculus abortivus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.'s house, going to seed and in bloom. The branches are fine and spreading, about eight or ten inches high.")

Yellow violet, almost; say to-morrow. See May 16, 1853 ("Yellow violets  yesterday at least. "); May 18, 1856 ("E. Emerson finds half a dozen yellow violets."); May 25, 1852 ("The large yellow woods violet (V. pubescens) by this brook now out"); 

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden.

May 27. 

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

May 27, 2019

May 27, 2015

Friday. P. M. — Up Assabet.

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks, evidently from the new and downy leaves. These expressions of the face of Nature are as constant and sure to recur as those of the eyes of maidens, from year to year, — sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. 

It is a new and peculiar season when this phenomenon is observed. Rivers flow already bearing the dust of summer on their bosoms. The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. 

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. 

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. 

A peculiarity of these days is the first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any newspaper.

Melvin and Skinner tell me of three wild geese, to their surprise seen within a week down the river, — a gander and two geese, — which must be breeding here. Melvin got near them a fortnight ago. They are too much disturbed to rear a brood, I think. 

Melvin tells of seeing once in June dead shad-flies washed up on the North Branch in windrows, along the shore. 

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. 

Went by Temple's. For rural interest, give me the houses of the poor, with simply a cool spring, a good deal of weather-stained wood, and a natural door-stone: a house standing somewhere in nature, and not merely in an atmosphere of art, on a measured lot; on a hillside, perchance, obviously not made by any gardener, amid rocks not placed there by a landscape gardener for effect; with nothing "pretty" about it, but life reduced to its lowest terms and yet found to be beautiful. 

This is a good foundation or board to spring from. All that the natives erect themselves above that will be a genuine growth.

Blue-eyed grass out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 27, 1859

Now first I notice a linty dust on the surface of the dark river at the Hemlocks. See June 4, 1854 (“The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off?”) and  note to June 4, 1857 (“I observed yesterday, the first time this year, the lint on the smooth surface of the Assabet at the Hemlocks, giving the water a stagnant look. It is an agreeable phenomenon to me, as connected with the season and suggesting warm weather. I suppose it to be the down from the new leaves.”)

These expressions of the face of Nature are sure to be repeated as long as time lasts. April 18, 1852 ("For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle.”); September 24, 1859 ("Young men have not learned the phases of Nature; they do not know what constitutes a year, or that one year is like another."); May 5, 1860 ("It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself annually”)

The dark river, now that shades are increased, is like the dark eye of a maiden. See June 6, 1855 ("You see the dark eye and shade of June on the river as well as on land.”); June 9. 1856 ("It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath .”); May 29, 1857 ("the sunniness contrasts with the shadows of the freshly expanded foliage, like the glances of an eye from under the dark eyelashes of June.”);May 29, 1857  ("It was like the first bright flashings of an eye from under dark eyelashes after shedding warm tears."); May 29, 1857 ("I sit on the top of Lee's Cliff, looking into the light and dark eye of the lake.")

Azalea nudiflora blooms generally. See note to May 31, 1853 ( It blossomed at the old election time, and he thought it 'the handsomest flower that grows.’”)

Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. See May 30, 1857 ("In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not.”). Compare April 28, 1856 ("I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, . . . suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further."); May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

The first hearing of the crickets' creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. See May 18, 1860 ("The creak of the cricket has been common on all warm, dry hills, banks, etc., for a week, - inaugurating the summer."); May 22, 1854 (“The song suggests lateness, but only as we come to a knowledge of eternity after some acquaintance with time. . . . . Only in their saner moments do men hear the crickets. . . .A quire has begun which pauses not for any news, for it knows only the eternal.”); May 24, 1857 (“Hear the first cricket as I go through a warm hollow, bringing round the summer with his everlasting strain.”); May 26, 1852 ("To-night I hear many crickets. They have commenced their song. They bring in the summer.”); May 30, 1855 ("Is it not summer now when the creak of the crickets begins to be general?”); June 1, 1856 (“Was soothed and cheered by I knew not what at first, but soon detected the now more general creak of crickets”); June 4, 1857 ( “the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors.”)

Golden senecio, at least to-morrow. See June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now")

Blue-eyed grass out. See May 29, 1852 ("Blue-eyed grass [in bloom]."); May 29, 1853 ("That exceedingly neat and interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention"); May 29, 1856 (“Blue-eyed grass, probably to-morrow.”); May 31, 1854 (“Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.”); June 6, 1855 (“Blue-eyed grass maybe several days in some places.”); June 15, 1851 (“The blue-eyed grass, well named, looks up to heaven.”); June 15, 1852 ("The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. "); June 15, 1859 ("Blue-eyed grass at height."); June 19, 1853 ("I see large patches of blue-eyed grass in the meadow across the river from my window"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); June 20, 1852 ("The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open?"); July 6, 1851("Blue-eyed grass is now rarely seen. “) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, blue-eyed grass

On the way up the dogs are let loose and they dutifully walk along the trail in front of us.  I veer off on the last steep and get up to my chair in time to take several pictures of a the sunset through open clouds in the west. A jet pass is over headed for Europe. The sun is setting so at the right moment is reflecting both from the lake and the pond  —and still has more north to go. At dusk we head back regular way and both can walk in the dark without lights as the path is illuminated by the phosphorus of paint. Every rock that is to be avoided as marked and the rest is a fairyland of of lights pulling us through the woods.

This moment each year

the setting sun reflecting

from both pond and lake.

~zphx 20190527