in Thoreau’s Journal:

Listen in every zephyr for some reproof.  It is the sweetest strain of the music. Its satire trembles round the world.

We cannot touch a string––awake a sound but it reproves us….Not a music to dance to, but to live by.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The white anemone is withering with drought; else would probably have opened. Return while the sun is setting behind thunder-clouds, which now over-shadow us. Between the heavy masses of clouds, mouse-colored, with dark-blue bases, the patches of clear sky are a glorious cobalt blue, as Sophia calls it.

How happens it that the sky never appears so intensely, brightly, memorably blue as when seen between clouds and, it may be, as now in the south at sunset? This, too, is like the blue in snow. For the last two or three days it has taken me all the forenoon to wake up.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden––larger than any artificial garden that I have read of––and far more attractive to me,

mile after mile of embowered walks, with animals running free & wild therein as from the first––varied with land & water prospect––and above all so retired that it is extremely rare that you meet a single wanderer in its maze ––  No gardener is seen therein no gates nor… You may wander away to solitary bowers & brooks & hills….

June 18, 1860 in Thoreau’s Journal:

I see in the southerly bays of Walden the pine pollen now washed up thickly; only at the bottom of the bays, especially the deep long bay, where it is a couple of rods long by six to twenty-four inches wide and one inch deep; pure sulphur-yellow, and now has no smell.

It has come quite across the pond from where the pines stand, full half a mile, probably washed across most of the way.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year — after a sultry night and before a sultry day — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious season of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or silvered with dews, without the torrid summer’s sun or the obscuring haze. The sound of crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight.

I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak right on with such dewy faith and promise, as if it were still night — expressing the innocence of morning — when the creak of the cricket is fresh and bedewed. While the creak of the cricket has that ambrosial sound, no crime can be committed. It buries Greece and Rome past resurrection. The earth-song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health! health! is the burden of its song. It is, of course, that man, refreshed with sleep, is thus innocent and healthy and hopeful. When we hear that sound of the crickets in the sod, the world is not so much with us.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It would be well if we saw ourselves as in perspective always, impressed with distinct outline on the sky, side by side with the shrubs on the river’s brim.

So let our life stand to heaven as some fair, sunlit tree against the western horizon, and by sunrise be planted on some eastern hill to glisten in the first rays of the dawn.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting for the stake-driver.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

See the Common iris in meadow in Acton—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, — umbrageous summer!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

How agreeable in a still, cloudy day, when large masses of clouds, equally dispersed, float across the sky, not threatening rain, but preserving a temperate air, to see a sheet of water thus revealed by its reflections, a smooth, glassy mirror, reflecting the light sky and the dark and shady woods. It is very much like a mirage. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The red huckleberry & the white & red blueberry blossoms are very handsome and interesting now & would attract more attention if the prospect of their fruit did not make us overlook them.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under sides of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. Already the grass is not so fresh and liquid-velvety a green, having much of it blossom[ed] and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants, but the general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. The wind is not quite agreeable, because it prevents your hearing the birds sing. Meanwhile the crickets are strengthening their quire. The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. Methinks this is a traveller’s month. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. The deciduous trees have filled up the intervals between the evergreens, and the woods are bosky now.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Gathered the first strawberries to day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Clover begins to redden the fields generally.  The horse tail has for some time covered the cause way with a close dense green like moss. The quail is heard at a distance.  The marsh-speedwell has been out ap some days. A little mowing begins in the gardens––& front yards. The grass is in full vigor now––yet it is already parti-colored with whitish withered stems which worms have cut.

Buttercups of various kind mingled yellow––the meads the tall––the bulbous––& the reopens–– Probably a primos laevigatus in trillium woods ready to blossom. Observe its berries in the fall.  The cinque foil 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.  

in Thoreau’s Journal:  

Begin to observe and to admire the forms of trees with shining foliage and each its shadow on the hillside.

This morning I hear the note of young bluebirds in the air, which have recently taken wing, and the old birds keep up such a warbling and twittering as remind me of spring.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The clear brightness of June was well represented yesterday by the buttercups— (R. bilbosa) along the roadside—

Their yellow so glossy & varnished within, but not without.  Surely there is no reason why the new butter should not be yellow now—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

These are the clear breezy days of early June, when the leaves are young and few and the sorrel not yet in its prime.

Perceive the meadow fragrance.