Meditations under a rock in a shower.

May 30. 

P. M. — To chestnut oaks. 

May 30, 2017

I think that there are many chestnut-sided warblers this season. They are pretty tame. One sits within six feet of me, though not still. He is much painted up. 

Blue-stemmed goldenrod is already a foot high. 

I see the geranium and two-leaved Solomon's-seal out, the last abundant. The red pyrus by the path, not yet, but probably the same elsewhere. 

The young black oak leafets are dark red or reddish, thick and downy; the scarlet oak also are somewhat reddish, thick and downy, or thin and green and little downy, like red oak, but rather more deeply cut; the red oak broad, thin, green and not downy; the white pink-red. 

Was it not a whip-poor-will I scared up at the base of a bush in the woods to-day, that went off with a clumsy flight? 

By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond, just before reaching the wall by the brook, I see what I take to be an uncommonly large Uvularia sessilifolia flower, but, looking again, am surprised to find it the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before. It is a taller and much more erect plant than the other, with a larger flower, methinks. It is considerably past its prime and probably began with the other. 

Chestnut oak not yet in bloom, though the black and scarlet are well out in ordinary places. Its young leaves have a reddish-brown tinge. All the large trees are cut down. 

The white oak is not out. 

It is remarkable that many beach and chestnut oak leaves, which so recently expanded, have already attained their full size! How they launch themselves forth to the light! How suddenly Nature spreads her umbrellas! How little delay in expanding leaves! They seem to expand before our eyes, like the wings of moths just fallen from the cocoon. 

Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard. 

Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower. 

When first I had sheltered myself under the rock, I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before, had taken up my residence there, as it were. Ordinarily we make haste away from all opportunities to be where we have instinctively endeavored to get. 

When the storm was over where I was, and only a few thin drops were falling around me, I plainly saw the rear of the rain withdrawing over the Lincoln woods south of the pond, and, above all, heard the grand rushing sound made by the rain falling on the freshly green forest, a very different sound when thus heard at a distance from what it is when we are in the midst of it. In the latter case we are soothed by a gentle pattering and do not suspect the noise which a rain storm makes. 

This Cliff thus became my house. I inhabited it. When, at length, it cleared up, it was unexpectedly early and light, and even the sun came out and shone warm on my back as I went home. Large puddles occupied the cart-paths and rose above the grass in the fields. 

In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and in spected 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. Birds appear to be but little incommoded by the rain. Yet they do not often sing in it. 

The blue sky is never more celestial to our eyes than when it is first seen here and there between the clouds at the end of a storm, — a sign of speedy fair weather. I saw clear blue patches for twenty minutes or more in the southwest before I could leave my covert, for still I saw successive fine showers falling between me and the thick glaucous white pine beneath.

I think that such a projection as this, or a cave, is the only effectual protection that nature affords us against the storm. 

I sang "Tom Bowling" there in the midst of the rain, and the dampness seemed to be favorable to my voice. There was a slight rainbow on my way home. 

Met Conant riding home, who had been caught in town and detained, though he had an umbrella. 

Already a spider or other insect had drawn together the just expanded leaves of a hickory before my door with its web within them, making a close tent. This twig extended under my rocky roof and was quite dry. 

Probably a portion of the Cliff, being undermined by rain, had anciently fallen out and left this rocky roof above.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 30, 1857

Buttercups thickly spot the churchyard. See May 27, 1853 ("The buttercups in the church-yard and on some hillsides are now looking more glossy and bright than ever after the rain.”); June 2, 1852 (“Buttercups now spot the churchyard.”)

Perhaps I could write meditations under a rock in a shower. See August 13, 1853 (“Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer?”)

The blue sky is never more celestial to our eyes than when it is first seen here and there between the clouds at the end of a storm. See January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm!")

I began at once to look out on the pond with new eyes, as from my house. I was at Lee's Cliff as I had never been there before . . .See June 13, 1854 ("When I have stayed out thus late many miles from home, and have heard a cricket beginning to chirp louder near me in the grass I have felt that I was not far from home after all, -- began to be weaned from my village home."); May 23, 1853 ("[A] certain lateeness ... releases me from the obligation to return in any particular season. I have passed the Rubicon of staying out. ...I will wander further from what I have called my home - to the home which is forever inviting me. In such an hour the freedom of the woods is offered me")

May 30 See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 30

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

A new season has commenced.

June 4.

P. M. ——To Hubbard’s Close. 

Clears up in forenoon. White clover out probably some days, also red as long. 

It has just cleared off after this first rain of consequence for a long time, and now I observe the shadows of massive clouds still floating here and there in the peculiarly blue sky; which 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, 2020

Great white-bosomed clouds, darker beneath, float through the cleared sky and are seen against the deliciously blue sky, such a sky as we have not had before. 

Thus it is after the first important rain at this season. The song of birds is more lively and seems to have a new character; a new season has commenced. 

In the woods I hear the tanager and chewink and red-eye. It is fairly summer, and mosquitoes begin to sting in earnest. 

I see the dandelions now generally gone to seed amid the grass —their downy spheres.

There are now many potentillas ascendant, and the Erigeron bellidifolius is sixteen inches high and quite handsome, by the railroad this side of turn-off.

Redstarts still very common in the Trillium Woods (yesterday on Assabet also). Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc. I see some dark on the breast. 

The Lycopodium dendroideum now shows fresh green tips like the hemlock. Greenish puffs on panicled andromedas. 

Lint comes off on to clothes from the tender leaves, but it is clean dirt and all gone when you get home; and now the crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy under sides, are beautiful as a flower, and the more salmon white oak. 

The Linnaea borealis has grown an inch. But are not the flowers winter-killed? I see dead and blackened flower-buds. Perhaps it should have opened before. 

Wintergreen has grown two inches. 

See a warbler much like the black and white creeper, but perched warbler-like on trees; streaked slate, white, and black, with a large white and black mark on wing, crown divided by a white line and then chestnut (?) or slate or dark, and then white above and below eye, breast and throat streaked downward with dark, rest beneath white. Can it be the common black and white creeper? Its note hardly reminds me of that. It is somewhat like pse pse pse pse, psa psa, weese weese weese, or longer. It did not occur to me that it was the same till I could not find any other like this in the book. 

Canada Warbler
(Sylvia pardalina /Cardellina canadensis)

In the clintonia swamp I hear a smart, brisk, loud and clear whistling warble, quite novel and remarkable, something like te chit a wit, te chit a wit, tchit a wit, tche tche. It is all bright yellow or ochreous orange (?) below except vent, and a dark or black crescent on breast, with a white line about eye. Above it appears a nearly uniform dark blue slate, legs light, bill dark (?), tail long and forked. I think it must be the Canada warbler, seen in ’37, though that seems short for this.

 

It is quite different from the warbler of May 30. 

The recent high winds have turned the edges of young leaves by beating and killing them. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 4, 1855

The shadows of massive clouds still floating here and there in the peculiarly blue sky. See May 30, 1852 (A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); June 3, 1858 ("The shadows of clouds flitting over the landscape are a never-failing source of amusement . . . to see one man’s farm in the shadow of a cloud, — which perhaps he thought covered all the Northern States, — while his neighbor’s farm was in sunshine."); June 9, 1856 ("There are some large cumuli with glowing downy cheeks floating about"); June 11, 1856 ("Great cumuli are slowly drifting in the intensely blue sky, with glowing white borders”). June 24, 1852 ("The drifting white downy clouds are objects of a large, diffusive interest. . . among the most glorious objects in nature. ");  July 1, 1854 ("The clouds are separate glowing masses or blocks floating in the sky, not threatening rain. I see from this hill their great shadows pass slowly here and there over the top of the green forest. ")

In the woods I hear the tanager and chewink and red-eye. See July 10, 1854 ("The singing birds at present are . . . Red-eye, tanager, wood thrush, chewink, veery, oven-bird, — all even at midday.")

I see the dandelions now generally gone to seed amid the grass —their downy spheres. See June 4, 1852 (“The dandelions are now almost all gone to seed, and children may now see if "your mother wants you."”);  May 9, 1858 ("A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Dandelion in Spring

Redstarts still very common . . . Note tche, tche, tche vit, etc. See.May 26, 1855 ("Saw a redstart . . . black with a sort of brick red on sides [of] breast, spot on wing  and under root of tail. Note heard once next day, at Kalmia Swamp, somewhat like aveet aveet aveet aveet.");   June 6, 1855  ("On the Island I hear still the redstart—tsip tsip tsip tsip, tsit-i-yet, or sometimes tsip tsip tsip tsip, tse vet . . . It repeats this at regular intervals for a long time") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The American Redstart

The Linnaea borealis has grown an inch. See    June 1, 1855 ("I find the Linnaea borealis growing near the end of the ridge in this lot toward the meadow, near a large white pine stump recently cut."); See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Linnaea borealis (Twinflower)

Can it be the common black and white creeper? Its note hardly reminds me of that. It is somewhat like pse pse pse pse, psa psa, weese weese weese, or longer.  See April 28, 1856 (" I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that”); May 11, 1856 ("The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser.”);  May 12, 1855 ("A very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper

I think it must be the Canada Warbler? See May 23, 1860 ("I get sight for a moment of a large warbler on a young oak, – only the under side, which is a clear bright lemon-yellow, all beneath, with a sort of crescent of black spots on the breast. Is it not the Sylvia pardalina?"); May 28, 1860 ("Sylvia pardalina. It is a bright yellow beneath, with a broad black stripe along each side of the throat, becoming longish black marks crescent-wise on the fore part of the breast, leaving a distinct clear bright-yellow throat, and all the rest beneath bright-yellow; a distinct bright-yellow ring around eye; a dark bluish brown apparently all above; yellowish legs. Not shy; on the birches.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Canada Warbler

The warbler of May 30. See May 30, 1855 ("A familiar warbler not recognized for some years")

The recent high winds. See May 30, 1855  ("A strong west wind "); June 1, 1855 ("A very windy day, the third, drowning the notes of birds."); June 2, 1855 ("Still windier than before.")

June 4.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 4

The dandelions

        now gone to seed – downy spheres

seen amid the grass.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  A new season has commenced.

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 © 2009-2025

Now is the time to observe the leaves

June 4.

Now is the time to observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. I stand over a sprig of choke-cherry, with fair and perfect glossy green obovate and serrate leaves, in the woods this p.m., as if it were a rare flower.  Now various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. 

June 4 2022

In the washing breeze the lighter undersides begin to show, and a new light is flashed upon the year, lighting up and enlivening the landscape.

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? I distinguish the different surfaces, — here broken into waves and sparkling with light, there, where covered with this linty dust or film, merely undulating without breaking, and there quite smooth and stagnant. I see in one place a sharp and distinct line, as if there were a cobweb on the water, between the clear and ruffled water and the stagnant filmy part, as if it were a slightly raised seam. 

These warm and dry days, which put spring far behind, the sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. It is the iced-cream of song. It is modulated shade.

I now notice froth on the pitch and white pines.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 4, 1854

Now is the time to observe the leaves, so fair in color and so perfect in form. See June 4, 1855 (“and now the crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy under sides, are beautiful as a flower”); May 17, 1852 ("These young leaves have the beauty of flowers. “);May 17, 1853 (" Now is the time to admire the very young and tender leaves. ") See also June 4, 1860 ("You may say that now, the leafy season has fairly commenced.")

Now various forms of oak leaves in sprout-lands, wet-glossy, as if newly painted green and varnished, attract me. See June 4, 1855 ("And now the crimson velvety leafets of the black oak, showing also a crimson edge on the downy under sides, are beautiful as a flower, and the more salmon white oak. ")

The surface of the still water nowadays looking like dust at a little distance. Is it the down of the leaves blown off? See June 4, 1855 ("Lint comes off on to clothes from the tender leaves, but it is clean dirt and all gone when you get home "); June 4, 1857 ("Each under side of a leaf you strike leaves the mark of its lint on your clothes, but it is clean dirt and soon wears off."); June 6, 1855 (“You see . . . a dust-like tint on river, apparently from the young leaves and bud-scales, covering the waters, which begin to be smooth, and imparting a sense of depth.”. See also note to June 4, 1857 (“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 which so rapidly become smooth. . . . where the water slowly circles round in that great eddy, has the appearance of having been dusted over.”)

The sound of the cricket at noon has a new value and significance, so serene and cool. See June 4, 1857 ("One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song . . . the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in Spring

June 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 4

Now is the time to

observe the leaves so perfect

in color and form. 

In the washing breeze

the undersides of leaves flash

new light on the year.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Now is the time to observe the leaves

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540604

It is suddenly very warm

May 15

Looking off from hilltop. Trees generally are now bursting into leaf. The aspect of oak and other woods at a distance is somewhat like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens. In other directions, the light, graceful, and more distinct yellowish-green forms of birches are seen, and, in swamps, the reddish or reddish-brown crescents of the red maple tops, now covered with keys. 

Oak leaves are as big as a mouse's ear, and the farmers are busily planting. It is suddenly very warm and looks as if there might be a thunder-shower coming up from the west.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 15, 1854

Looking off from hilltop. Trees generally are now bursting into leaf. . . .like that of a very thick and reddish or yellowish mist about the evergreens. . . . See May 15, 1860 ("Looking from the Cliffs through the haze, the deciduous trees are a mist of leaflets, against which the pines are already darkened.”)

To Loring's Pond

May 17.

Decidedly fair weather at last; a bright, breezy, flowing, washing day.

The different color of the water at different times. To-day it is full of light and life, the breeze presenting many surfaces to the sun. There is a sparkling shimmer on it. It is a deep, dark blue, as the sky is clear. The air everywhere is, as it were, full of the rippling of waves.



This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. The water is seen running behind them. It is pleasant to know that it penetrates quite behind and isolates the land you see, and to see it flowing out from behind an island with shining ripples.

The sun on the young foliage of birches, alders, etc., on the opposite side of the pond has an enchanting effect. The sunshine has a double effect. The new leaves abet it, so fresh and tender, not apprehending their insect foes. Do I smell the young birch leaves at a distance ?

Most trees are beautiful when leafing out, but especially the birch. After a storm at this season, the sun comes out and lights up the tender expanding leaves, and all nature is full of light and fragrance, and the birds sing without ceasing, and the earth is a fairyland. The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.

I see dark pines in the distance in the sunshine, contrasting with the light fresh green of the deciduous trees.

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! The woods putting forth new leaves; it is a memorable season. So hopeful! These young leaves have the beauty of flowers.

There is life in these fresh and varied colors, life in the motion of the wind and the waves; all make it a flowing, washing day. It is a good day to saunter.

Does not summer begin after the May storm?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 17, 1852

This pond is the more interesting for the islands in it. See September 12, 1851 ("I love to gaze at the low island in the pond, — at any island or inaccessible land."); December 14, 1850 ("I walk on Loring's Pond to three or four islands there which I have never visited.")

The birch leaves are so small that you see the landscape through the tree, and they are like silvery and green spangles in the sun, fluttering about the tree.... See May 17, 1854 ("the wooded shore is all lit up with the tender, bright green of birches fluttering in the wind and shining in the light, ...")

Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world! May 24, 1860 ("How perfectly new and fresh the world is seen to be, when we behold a myriad sparkles of brilliant white sunlight on a rippled stream.")
Does not summer begin after the May storm? See  May 11, 1854 (" I suspect that summer weather may be always ushered in in a similar manner, — thunder-shower, rainbow, smooth water, and warm night.")

To Gowing's Swamp

June 7. 

A female chestnut-sided warbler
 hops within four feet of me.
inquisitively

6 A.M.— River nine and fifteen sixteenths above summer level; has risen one and three sixteenths inches since last evening at 6.30.

Thus, it having rained two days most of the time, though not much the last afternoon, the river had risen some six inches at the end of the last afternoon, by the time it cleared up, and only some one and a quarter inches in the next twelve hours of night.

P.M.– To Gowing’s Swamp and Copan.

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees.

This is a southwest-breezy day, after the rain of the last two days. There is on the whole a fresh and breezy coolness in June thus far, perhaps owing to the rains and the expanded foliage.

White clover already whitens some fields and resounds with bees.

Am surprised to find that in that frosty Holbrook Road Hollow (call it Frosty Poplar Hollow) none of the poplars (P. tremuliformis) less than ten feet high (or parts of others less than ten feet above the ground) in the bottom of the hollow have burst their buds yet, making this which in some localities is perhaps the earliest conspicuous tree, in others the latest to leaf.

Also the shrub oaks are but just begun to leaf here, and many maples and white birches have but lately leafed, having yet very small and tender leaves.

These poplars, and I think the oaks (for I detect no dead and withered leafets on them), etc., have here acquired a new habit, and are retarded in their development, just as if they grew in a colder latitude, like the plants by the snow in Tuckerman’s Ravine. They have not put forth and then been frost-bitten, as in most hollows, but the spring has come later to them.

The poplars generally look quite dead still amid the verdure that surrounds the hollow; only those that rise about ten feet are unfolded at the top.

The amount of development is a matter of elevation here. Generally speaking, all poplar buds above a certain level have burst, and all below are inert. The line of separation is very distinct now, because the tops of the tallest are already leafed out and are green. This level line extends to the hillsides all around, and above it all trees are leafed out. 

This is true of the shrub oaks also, except that a great many of them which stand much higher have already leafed and been frost-bitten, which makes them look about as late as those which apparently have not leafed. 

This hollow seems to be peculiar, — a dry depression between Beck Stow’s and the Great Meadows, — to be steadily cold and late, and not warm by day so that the buds burst and are then killed by frost, as usual. 

Perhaps it is not so much a frosty hollow as a cold one. It is most open north and south. 

Standing at Holbrook’s barrel spring, a female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me, inquisitively holding its head down one side to me and peeping at me. 

Seeing house-leek on several rocks in the fields and by roadside in the neighborhood of Brooks Clark’s, Farmer told me that it was the work of Joe Dudley, a simple fellow who lives at one of the Clarks; that, though half-witted, he knew more medicinal plants 335 than almost anybody in the neighborhood.

Is it necessary that the simpler should be a simpleton? I noticed rye (winter rye) just fairly begun to bloom, May 29th. 

A painted turtle beginning her hole for eggs at 4 P.M. 

Yellow bugs have come by thousands this clear and rather warm day after the rain; also squash-bugs have come. 

When, in a warm day after rain, the plants are tender and succulent, this is the time they work most. 

River at 6 P.M., twelve and five eighths inches above summer level. 

To-night the toads ring loudly and generally, as do hylodes also, the thermometer being at 62 at 9 P.M. 

Four degrees more of warmth, the earth being drier and the water warmer, makes this difference.

It appears, then, that the evening just after a rain-storm (as the last), thermometer 58, the toads will be nearly silent, but the hylodes wide awake; but the next evening, with thermometer at 62, both will be wide awake. 

Dor-bugs come humming by my head to-night. 

The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones, are to be observed. As I now remember, there is

• the whitish shoot of the white pine; 
• the reddish brown of the pitch pine, giving a new tinge to its tops; 
• the bead work of the hemlock; 
• the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps; 
• the frizzly-looking glaucous-green shoots and leafets of the fir (and fragrant now or soon); 
• the thin and delicate foliage of the larch; 
• the inconspicuous and fragrant arbor-vitæ;
•  the bead-work of the Juniperus repens (red cedar inconspicuous);
•  probably the bead work of the yew;
•  the tented leaves of the white oak;
•  the crimson black and white oaks and black shrub lately, and now, in hollows, the downy grayish (at first) of black and white, etc.;
•  the now tender, delicate green of swamp white and chincapin;
•  the large and yellowish, rapildy expanding (at first), of the nut trees; 
• the gamboge-yellow of the birches (now as dark as most, for leaves are acquiring one shade at present);
•  the thick darker green of alders;
•  the downyish of buttonwood still small;
•  the soon developed and darkened and fluttering early aspens and Gileads;
•  the still silvery Populus grandidentata; the small-leafeted and yellowish locust; 
• the early yellow of Salix alba; 
• the fine-leaved S. nigra; the wreath-and-column-leaved elm; 
• the suddenly expanding but few-leaved ash trees, showing much stalk, or stem, and branch;
•  the button-bush, with shoots before leaves;
•  the reddish-leafed young checkerberry; the suddenly developed and conspicuous viburnums (sweet and naked);
•  the unequal-leafing panicled andromeda;
•  the purplish-brown stipules of the Amelanchier Botryapium; 
• the downy stipules of the A.oblongifolia.

The red maples now become darker and firm, or hard. 

The large-leafed sumachs. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 7, 1860

Red maple seed is still in the midst of its fall; is blown far from the trees.  See June 3, 1860 ("The roads now strewn with red maple seed."); August 1, 1860 ("If you look carefully through a dense red maple swamp now, you find many little maples a couple of inches high") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys

A female chestnut-sided warbler hops within four feet of me. See note to June 15, 1854 (" A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. "); See also JJ Audubon ("In the beginning of May 1808, I shot five of these birds, on a very cold morning, near Pottsgrove, in the State of Pennsylvania. There was a slight fall of snow at the time, although the peach and apple trees were already in full bloom. The females had the ovaries furnished with numerous eggs, about the size of the head of a common pin. I have never met with a single individual of this species since.")

Am surprised to find that in that frosty Holbrook Road Hollow none of the poplars (P. tremuliformis) less than ten feet high in the bottom of the hollow have burst their buds yet. See May 25, 1860 (" It is remarkable that the aspen on Holbrook's road, though in most places it is the earliest indigenous tree to leaf, is the very latest, and the buds are hardly yet swollen at all. Can it be a distinct variety? ") See also  June 6, 1857 ("Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. "); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens. and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Leaf-Out


The peculiarities of the new leaves, or young ones . . .

• the whitish shoot of the white pine. See May 19, 1854 ("The white pine shoots are now two or three inches long generally, — upright light marks on the body of dark green.")

• the bead work of the hemlock See June 5, 1853 (" The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage.")

• the gamboge-yellow of the birches. See May 21, 1860 ("The color of the new leaves is surprising . The birches by the railroad , as I am whirled by them in the cars , flash upon me yellow as gamboge , their leaves more like flowers than foliage.") 

• the now just conspicuous bursting lighter glaucous-green buds of the black spruce in cold swamps. See May 21, 1857 ("The staminate buds of the black spruce are quite a bright red."); May 22, 1856 ("The red and cream-colored cone-shaped staminate buds of the black spruce will apparently shed pollen in one to three days?"); June 10, 1855 (" The white spruce cones are now a rich dark purple, more than a half inch long.")

June 7. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 7

Red maple seed is

still in the midst of its fall –

blown far from the trees.

The conspicuous

bursting glaucous-green buds of

black spruce in cold swamps.

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