in Thoreau’s Journal:

Clover begins to redden the fields generally. The quail is heard at a distance. Buttercups of various kinds mingled, yellow the meadows, the tall, the bulbous, the repens.

The cinquefoil, in its ascending state, keeping pace with the grass, is now abundant in the fields. Saw it one or two weeks ago. This is a feature of June. Still both high and low blueberry and huckleberry blossoms abound. The hemlock woods, their fanlike sprays edged or spotted with short, yellowish green shoots, tier above tier, shelf above shelf, look like a cool bazaar of rich embroidered goods.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

This is June, the month of grass and leaves…Already the aspens are trembling again, and a new summer is offered me. I feel a little fluttered in my thoughts, as if I might be too late. Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration. It simply gives a tone and hue to my thought.

Each annual phenomenon is a reminiscence and prompting. Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolutions of the seasons as two cog-wheels fit into each other. We are conversant with only one point of contact at a time, from which we receive a prompting and impulse, and instantly pass to a new season or point of contact, A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts, which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.

June 6, 2017 Photos

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The lupine is now in its glory.

It is the more important because it occurs in such extensive patches even an acre or more together––and of such a pleasing variety of colors, purple-pink or lilac–and white–especially with the sun on it, when the transparency of the flower makes its color changeable.

It paints a whole hill side with its blue–making such a field––(if not meadow) as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be covered with dew drops– Such a profession of the heavenly–the elysian color–as if these were the elysian fields. They say the seeds look like babies’ faces and hence the flower is so named. No other flowers exhibit so much blue. That is the value of the lupine. The earth is blued with them. Yet a third of a mile distant I do not detect their color on the hill side– Perchance because it is the color of the air. It is not distinct enough.

You passed along here perchance a fortnight ago & the hill-side was comparatively barren––but now you come & these glorious redeemers appear to have flashed out here all at once. Who planted the seeds of lupines in the barren soil? Who watereth the lupines in the fields?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Going up Fair Haven Hill the blossoms of the huckleberries & blue berries imparted a sweet scent to the whole hill-side.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The pinxter flower growing as it does as an underwood in the shade of larger trees––the naked umbels of its lively rose pink flowers are seen flashing out against a back ground of green or of dark shaded recesses–

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Quite a fog this morning.

Does it not always follow the cooler nights after the first really warm weather about the end of May?

June 1, 2017 Photo

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

A cold southeast wind.

Blue-eyed grass, apparently in pretty good season.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The common blue-flag––

just out at Ball’s Hill.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

That exceedingly neat & interesting little flower blue-eyed grass now claims our attention.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

This warm hazy afternoon the sun is shorn of his beams now at six o clock––& the lupines do not look so well for it––

their lilac tints show best looking at them towards the sun for they are transparent.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Blue eyed grass has been out some time….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

1852

The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms— Yet the air is fresh as from the salt water. The meadow smells sweet as you go along low places in the road at sundown.

1853

A new season has commenced – summer- leafy June….The buttercups in the churchyard are now in perfection.

1854

The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:  

Within the last week or so the grass & leaves have grown many shades darker––& if we had leaped from last wednesday to this we should have been startled by the change—the dark bluish green of the rank grass especially.  How rapidly the young twigs shoot—the plants trees—shrubs—no sooner leaf out than they shoot forward surprisingly as if they had acquired a head by being repressed so long.

They do not grow nearly so rapidly at any season. Many do most of the growing for the year in a week or two at this season. They shoot—they spring & the rest of the year they harden & mature.  & perhaps have a 2nd spring in the later part of the summer or in the fall.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The sun rises red––with a great red halo through the fog.

 1852

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The buttercup season has arrived here.

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1853

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As the seasons revolve toward July. Every new flower that opens, no doubt, expresses a new mood of the human mind….

I see the light purple of rhodora enlivening the edges of swamps––another color the sun wears.

It is a beautiful shrub seen afar & makes a great show from the abundance of its bloom unconcealed by leaves––rising about the andromeda- Is it not the most showy high colored flower or shrub? Flowers are the dif colors of the sun light.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

How many times I have been surprised thus on turning about on this very spot at the fairness of the earth!

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The earlier apple trees are in bloom––& resound with the hum of bees of all sizes & other insects. To sit under the 1st apple tree in blossom is to take another step into summer. The apple blossoms are so abundant & full–white tinged with red–a rich–scented pomona fragrance–telling of heaps of apples in the autumn––perfectly innocent wholesome & delicious.

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 in Thoreau’s Journal:

All flowers are beautiful….Some apple trees in blossom– Most are just ready to burst forth–the leaves being half formed….

A ladies slipper well budded & now white…The white violets by the spring are rather scarce now.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

This is the season when the meadow grass is seen waving in the wind at the same time that the shadows of clouds are passing over it.