in Thoreau’s Journal:

Lady’s-slipper almost fully blossomed….The shrub oaks are now blossoming.

The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers. The hickory buds are almost leaves. The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. The deciduous trees are springing, to countenance the pines, which are evergreen. It seems to take but one summer day to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between winter and summer is reached.  The birds are in full blast. There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory and sassafras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the case of the early aspen you could almost see the leaves expand and acquire a darker green––this to be said the 12th or 13th or 14th––under the influence of the sun and genial atmosphere. Now they are only as big as a nine pence, to-morrow or sooner they are as big as a pistareen, and the next day they are as big as a dollar. This from its far greater prevalence than the aspens, balm-of-Gilead, white maples, etc., is the first to give the woodlands anywhere generally a (fresh) green aspect.

It is the first to clothe large tracts of deciduous woodlands with green, and perchance it marks an epoch in the season, the transition decidedly and generally from bare twigs to leaves. When the birches have put on their green sacks, then a new season has come. The light reflected from their tender yellowish green is like sunlight. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I was ready to say that I had seen no more beautiful flower than the dandelion. That has the vernal scent.

How many flowers have no peculiar, but only this simple vernal, fragrance?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The shad-bush in bloom is now conspicuous, its white flags on all sides. Is it not the most massy and conspicuous of any wild plant now in bloom ? I see where the farmer mending his fence has just cut one to make part of the fence, and it is stretched out horizontally, a mass of white bloom.

in Thoreau’s Journal

The sounds & sights—as birds & flowers heard & seen at those seasons when there are fewest—are most memorable & suggestive of poetic associations.  

————

Most men can be easily transplanted from here there, for they have so little root — no tap-root — or their roots penetrate so little way, that you can thrust a shovel quite under them and take them up, roots and all.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A great many apple trees out, and probably some for two days.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all, world-ridden.

I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out of his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can’t do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crochets. He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

5 a. m. — In the morning and evening, when waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If these gates of golden willows affect me, they correspond to the beauty and promise of some experience on which I am entering. If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry — all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Is not all the summer akin to a paradise.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How dead would the globe seem—especially at this season if it were not for these water surfaces…We are slow to realize water—the beauty & magic of it.

It is interestingly strange forever….I look round with a thrill on this bright fluctuating surface on which no man can walk—whereon is—no trace of foot step—unstained as glass.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

If man is thankful for the serene & warm day—much more are the flowers—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomenon to the preservation of Moral & intellectual health.

The discipline of the schools or of business—can never impart such serenity to the mind.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Every part of the world is beautiful today— — The bright shimmering water—fresh light-green grass springing up on the hills—tender firm moss-like before it waves. — the very faint blue sky without distinct clouds is least beautiful of all, having yielded its beauty to the earth—& the fine light smokes—sometimes blue against the woods.— and the tracts where the woods have been cut the past winter. The beautiful etherial not misty blue of the horizon—& its mts, as if painted.

Now all buds may swell methinks—now the summer may begin for all creatures. The wind appears to be a little N of W. The waters still high have a fine shimmering sparkle over a great part of their surface—not so large nor quite so bright as in the fall.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Leaf-stem, bud, and flower are all very handsome in their place & season.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How cheering & glorious any landscape viewed from an eminence! 

For every one has its horizon & sky. It is so easy to take wide views.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the earth. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Found the first Violet….

The woods have a damp smell this morning — I hear a robin amid them….The grass ground—low ground at least wears a good green tinge now.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Bluets out on the bank by Tarbell’s spring brook, maybe a day or two.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The may-flower on the point of blossoming— I think I may say that it will blossom to-morrow. The blossoms of this plant are remarkably concealed beneath the leaves—perhaps for protection— It is singularly unpretending—not seeking to exhibit or display its simply beauty. It is the most delicate flower both to eye & to scent as yet—

Its weather worn leaves do not adorn it. If it had fresh spring leaves it would be more famous & sought after.