Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/98

88 They do not simply then, if ever, venture forth, but then invariably and at once, the whole length of the river, they one and all rally out, and begin to dimple its broad surface, as if it were a necessity so to do.

June 10, 1853. To Mason's Pasture, in Carlisle. Haying begins in front yards. Cool, but agreeable easterly winds. The streets now beautiful with verdure and the shade of elms, under which you look through an air, clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. As C and I go through the town, we hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young now learning to fly. The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness, but it is more agreeable to my eye than my nose. The fuzzy seeds or down of the black willow is filling the air over the river, and, falling on the water, covers its surface. By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early then they had matured their seed. The mountain laurel will begin to bloom to-morrow. The frost some weeks since killed most of the buds and shoots, except where they were protected by the trees or by themselves, and now new shoots have put forth, and grow four or five inches from the sides of what were the leading ones. It is a plant which plainly requires the protection of the wood. It is stunted in the open pasture.