in Thoreau’s Journal:

Trillium berry

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I do not hear this morning the breathing of chip birds—nor the song of robins. Are the mornings now thus ushered in—are they as spring-like? Has not the year grown old. Methinks we do ourselves at any rate some what tire of the season–& observe less attentively and with less interest the opening of new flowers—and the song of the birds– It is the signs of the fall that affect us most. It is hard to live in the summer content with it.

in Thoreau’s Journal

Now then the river’s brim is in perfection after the mikania is in bloom & before the Pontederia & pads & the willows are too much imbrowned….

It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer—& another long declivity from midsummer to winter….

The Pontederia leaves have but a short life the spring so late & fall so early.

in Thoreau’s Journal

The swamp blackberry on high land ripe a day or 2.

August 3, 2016 Photo

 in Thoreau’s Journal

A splendid entire rainbow after a slight shower….outermost broad red—passing through yellow to green then narrow red—then blue or indigo (not plain what) then faint red again.

It is too remarkable to be remarked on.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

It is a new era with the flowers when the small purple fringed orchis as now is found in shady swamps standing along the brooks. (It appears to be alone of its class— Not to be overlooked it has so much flower though not so high colored as the Arethusa).

July 30, 2016: Photo along the Red Hill River, Sandwich, NH, USA

August 1, 1852 in Thoreau’s Journal

The small rough sun flower helianthus divaricatus tells of August heats….

May it not stand for the character of August?

Found a long dense spike of the Orchis psycodes— Much later this than the great orchis—the same only smaller & denser—not high colored enough

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August 1, 1860 in Thoreau’s Journal

How much of beauty–of color as well as form–on which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us! No one but a botanist is likely to perceive nicely the different shades of green which the open surface of the earth is clothed–not even a landscape painter if he does not know the species of sedges and grasses which paint it.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

Saw but one Lysimachia stricta left in the meadows—the mead. sweet meadows.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

Photos: July 30, 2016

A small purple orchis Platanthera psyches––quite small––so that I perceive what I call by this name before must have been the fimbriata.

in Thoreau’s Journal

At Veronia meadow I notice the beds of horse-mint now in flower—bluish whorls of flowers now in its prime. Now is the time to gather thoroughwort. Cardinals are in their prime.

July 28, 2016: Cardinal Flower

The Hibiscus is barely budded but already the mead hay mowers have sheared close to it. Most fields are so completely shorn now that the walls & fence sides where plants are protected appear unusually rich. I know not what aspect the flowers would present if our fields & meadows were untouched for a year….How large a proportion of flowers for instance are repressed to & found by hedges walls & fences.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

Solidago Altissima?

beyond the corner bridge out some days at least—but not rough hairy Golden rod & asters have fairly begun

i.e. there are several kinds of each out.

Photos:  July 27, 2016

in Thoreau’s Journal

I observe grape vines with green clusters almost fully grown hanging over the water—& hazel nut husks are fully formed & are richly autumnally significant. Viburnum denatum elder—& red-stemmed cornel—all with an abundance of green berries help clothe the bank—and the asclepia incarnata & meadow rue fill the crevices. Above all there is the Cardinal flower just opened—close to the water’s edge—remarkable for its intense scarlet color—contrasting with the surrounding green.

in Thoreau’s Journal

Almost Every bush now offers a wholesome & palatable diet to the wayfarer—large & dense clusters of v. vacillances—largest in most moist ground sprinkled with the red ones not ripe—

Great high blue berries—some nearly as big as cranberries—of an agreeable acid—huckleberries of various kinds some shining black—some dull black—some blue—& low black berries of 2 or more varieties.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

It is a rare music the earliest bee’s hum amid the flowers—revisiting the flower bells just after sunrise.

“A year indoors is a journey along a paper calendar; a year in our outer nature is the accomplishment of a tremendous ritual.”

from The Outermost House by Henry Beston

 in Thoreau’s Journal

The Cardinal flower probably open today. The quails are heard whistling this morning near the village.

in Thoreau’s Journal

But this habit of close observation— In Humboldt-Darwin & others. Is it to be kept up long—this science— Do not tread on the heels of your experience.

Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry puts an interval between the impression & the expression—waits till the seed germinates naturally.

in Thoreau’s Journal

Spear leaved thistle ap several days….

 in Thoreau’s Journal

Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived. It is not beautiful to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life.

 July 21, 1851

Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead away from towns, which lead us away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of the earth…where you may forget what country you are travelling…It is wide enough, wide as the thoughts it allows to visit you…There I can walk and stalk and pace and plod. That’s the road I can travel, that’s the particular Sudbury I am bound for…There I can walk, and recover the lost child that I am without ringing any bell…The deliberate pace of a thinker never made a road the worse for travelling on.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

The Rhexia virginica is in bloom.

 in Thoreau’s Journal

Yesterday it was spring & to-morrow it will be autumn— Where is the summer then? First came the St. Johns wort & now the golden rod to admonish us. I hear too a cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines—singing as in the fall. Ripe blackberries are multiplying.

I see the red-spotted berries of the small solomons seal in my path.