in Thoreau’s Journal:

The red-lily with its torrid color & sun freckled spots––dispensing too with the outer garment of a calyx––its petals so open & wide apart that you can see through it in every direction tells of hot weather–– It is a handsome bell shape––so upright & the flower prevails over every other part. It belongs not to spring. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

[on Mt. Washington, NH]

It is unwise for one to ramble over these mountains at any time, unless he is prepared to move with as much certainty as if he were solving a geometrical problem.  

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The first really foggy morning yet before I rise I hear the song of birds from out it—like the bursting of its bubbles with music—the bead on liquids just uncorked. Their song gilds thus the frostwork of the morning— As if the fog were a great sweet froth on the surface of land and water—whose fixed air escaped—whose bubbles burst with music. The sound of its evaporation—the fixed air of the morning just brought from the cellars of the night escaping.— The morning twittering of birds in perfect harmony with it. I came near awaking this morning. I am older than last year the mornings are further between— The days are fewer— Any excess—to have drunk too much water even, the day before is fatal to the morning’s clarity—but in health the sound of a cow bell is celestial music. O might I always wake to thought & poetry—regenerated! Can it be called a morning—if our senses are not clarified so that we perceive more clearly—if we do not rise with elastic vigor? How wholesome these fogs which some fear—they are cool medicated vapor baths—mingled by nature which bring to our senses all the medical properties of the meadows. The touchstones of health— Sleep with all your windows open and let the mist embrace you.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Keep on through North Tamworth, and breakfast by shore of one of the Ossipee Lakes. Chocorua north-northwest. Hear and see loons and see a peetweet’s egg washed up. A shallow-shored pond, too shallow for fishing, with a few breams seen near shore; some pontederia and targetweed in it.

Travelling thus toward the White Mountains, the mountains fairly begin with Red Hill and Ossipee Mountain, but the White Mountain scenery proper on the high hillside road in Madison before entering Conway, where you see Chocorua on the left, Mote Mountain ahead, Doublehead, and some of the White Mountains proper beyond, i. e. a sharp peak.

We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the roadside in Madison.

Chocorua is as interesting a peak as any to remember. You may be jogging along steadily for a day before you get round it and leave it behind, first seeing it on the north, then northwest, then west, and at last southwesterly, ever stern, rugged and inaccessible, and omnipresent. It was seen from Gilmanton to Conway, and from Moultonboro was the ruling feature. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Descended, and rode along the west and northwest side of Ossipee Mountain. Sandwich, in a large level space surrounded by mountains, lay on our left. Here first, in Moultonboro, I heard the tea-lee of the white-throated sparrow. We were all the afternoon riding along under Ossipee Mountain, which would not be left behind, unexpectedly large still, louring over your path. Crossed Bearcamp River, a shallow but unexpectedly sluggish stream, which empties into Ossipee Lake. Have new and memorable views of Chocorua, as we get round it eastward. Stop at Tamworth village for the night.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The fresher breeze which accompanies the dawn rustles the oaks and birches, and the earth respires calmly with the creaking of crickets.

Some hazel leaf stirs gently, as if anxious not to awake the day too abruptly, while the time is hastening to the distinct line between darkness and light.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The river and shores, with their pads and weeds, are now in their midsummer and hot-weather condition, now when the pontederias have just begun to bloom.

The seething river is confined within two burnished borders of pads, gleaming in the sun for a mile, and a sharp snap is heard from them from time to time. Next stands the upright phalanx of dark-green pontederias. When I have left the boat a short time the seats become intolerably hot. What a luxury to bathe now! It is gloriously hot, —the first of this weather.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I am confident that there can be nothing so beautiful in any cultivated garden with all its varieties as this wild clump….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The true poem is not that which the public read.

There is always a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this which is stereotyped in the poet’s life —is what he has become through his work…Let not the artist expect that his true work will stand in any prince’s gallery.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

A man’s life should be a stately march to a sweet but unheard music, and when to his fellows it shall seem irregular and inharmonious, he will only be stepping to a livelier measure, or his nicer ear hurry him into a thousand symphonies and concordant variations. There will be no halt ever, but at most a marching on his post, or such a pause as is richer than any sound, when the melody runs into such depth and wildness as to no longer be heard, but simply consented to with the whole life and being. He will take a false step never, even in the most arduous times, for then the music will not fail to swell into greater sweetness and volume, and itself rule the movement it inspired.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is a great deal of white clover this year. In many fields where there has been no clover seed sown for many years at least, it is more abundant than the red, and the heads are nearly as large. Also pastures which are close cropped, and where I think there was little or no clover last year, are spotted white with a humbler growth.

And everywhere, by roadsides, garden borders, etc., even where the sward is trodden hard, the small white heads on short stems are sprinkled everywhere. As this is the season for the swarming of bees, and this clover is very attractive to them, it is probably the more difficult to secure them; at any rate it is the more important to secure their services now that they can make honey so fast. It is an interesting inquiry why this year is so favorable to the growth of clover.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Moon more than 1/2

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I picked a handful or two of blueberries, though strawberries are now in their prime. They follow hard upon the first red amelanchier berries. Blueberries and huckleberries deserve to be celebrated, such simple, wholesome, universal fruits, food for the gods and for aboriginal men. They are so abundant that they concern our race much.

Tournefort called some of this genus, at least, Vitis Idcea, which apparently means the vine of Mount Ida. I cannot imagine any country without this kind of berry. Berry of berries. On which men live like birds. Still covering our hills as when the red men lived here. Are they not the principal wild fruit? Huckleberry puddings and pies, and huckleberries and milk, are regular and important dishes.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The earliest water surfaces as I remember––as soon as the ice is melted–present as fair & matured scenes, as soft & warm, reflecting the sky through the clear atmosphere––as in midsummer––far in advance of the earth. The earliest promise of the summer––

is it not in the smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted? The liquid eyes of nature––blue or black or even hazel. Deep or shallow––clear or turbid. Green next the shore the color of their iris.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

P.M. To Assabet bathing place. Found an unusual quantity of Amelanchier berries.

I think of the two common kinds, one a taller bush twice as high as my head, with thinner and lighter colored leaves, and larger, or at least somewhat softer, fruit, the other, a shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves, and dark blue berries, with often a sort of wooliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first and, I think, the sweetest bush berries, somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The drifting white downy clouds are to the landsman what sails on the sea are to him that dwells by the shore, – objects of a large, diffusive interest.

When the laborer lies on the grass or in the shade for rest, they do not too much tax or weary his attention. They are unobtrusive. I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one’s eyes ache. They are the flitting sails in that ocean whose bounds no man has visited. They are like all great themes, always at hand to be considered, or they float over us unregarded. Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects, or, near and low, they smite us with their lightnings and deafen us with their thunder. We know no Ternate nor Tidore grand enough whither we can imagine them bound. There are many mare’s-tails to-day, if that is the name. What could a man learn by watching the clouds? The objects which go over our heads unobserved are vast and indefinite. Even those clouds which have the most distinct and interesting outlines are commonly below the zenith, somewhat low in the heavens, and seen on one side. They are among the most glorious objects in nature. A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails. Some days we have the mackerel fleet. But our devilishly industrious laborers rarely lie in the shade. How much better if they were to take their nooning like the Italians, relax and expand and never do any work in the middle of the day, enjoy a little sabbath in the middle of the day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

From N. Barrett’s road I look over the Great Meadows. The meadows are the freshest, the greenest green in the landscape, and I do not (at thus hour, at any rate) see any bent grass light. The river is a singularly deep living blue, the bluest blue, such as I rarely observe, and its shore is silvered with white maples, which show the under sides of their leaves, stage upon stage, in leafy towers. Methinks the leaves continue to show their under sides sometime after the wind has done blowing. The southern edge of the meadow is also silvered with (I suppose) the red maple. Then there is the darker green of the forest, and the reddish, brown-ish, and bluish green of grass-lands and pastures and grain-fields, and the light-blue sky. There are not clouds enough in the sky to attract you to-day.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The strawberries may perhaps be considered a fruit of the spring, for they have depended chiefly on the freshness and moisture of spring, and on high lands are already dried up; a soft fruit, a sort of manna which falls in June, and in the meadows they lurk at the shady roots of the grass.

Now the blueberry, a somewhat firmer fruit, is beginning. Nuts, the firmest, will be the last.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The farmers have commenced haying.  With this the summer culminates.

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…