June

Poems, Quotes, Folklore, Myths, Holidays
Sayings, Links, References, Lore
Ideas, Garden Chores

Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Valley Spirit Center, Red Bluff, California

Quotes      Links      References      Garden Chores      Photos      Months

Quotes

The Month of June
Poetry, Quotations, Sayings, Facts, Information, Quips, Aphorisms, Lore

"In June, as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. 
No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."  
-   Aldo Leopold

"On this June day the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers. Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year - those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled."
-  Francis King

"I know well
that the June rains
just fall."
-   Onitsura 

 

"Last day of Spring,
ripe purple plums drop--
form is emptiness.

First day of Summer,
ditch completely dry--
emptiness is form."
- Mike Garofalo, Above the Fog

 

"O my Love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June."
-   Robert Burns 

Seasons and Time

"Now summer is in flower and natures hum 
Is never silent round her sultry bloom 
Insects as small as dust are never done 
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun 
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee 
Are never weary of their melody 
Round field hedge now flowers in full glory twine 
Large bindweed bells wild hop and streakd woodbine 
That lift athirst their slender throated flowers 
Agape for dew falls and for honey showers 
These round each bush in sweet disorder run 
And spread their wild hues to the sultry sun."
-   John Clare, June

"In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the June night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals  

"O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen."
-   Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring  

"If a June night could talk,
it would probably boast it invented romance."
-  Bern Williams 

'Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust,
Your childhood is a bower:
Let my fingers wander in the moss
Where glows the rosebud

Let me among the clean grasses
Drink the drops of dew
Which sprinkle the tender flower ..."
- Paul Verlaine, Spring

"The year is ended, and it only adds to my age;
Spring has come, but I must take leave of my home.
Alas, that the trees in this easter garden,
Without me, will still bear flowers."
-   Su Ting, circa 700 CE

Spring - Quotes for Gardeners

"The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings."
-   Joyce Kilmer, Spring

"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over  my vegetable progeny with a love 
that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching 
sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
-   Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse

Cuttings - June - Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo

"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 phenomena is reminiscence and prompting.  Our thoughts and sentiments answer to the revolution 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."
- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1857

"Two Seasons, it is said, exist—
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost—

May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer?"
-  Emily Dickinson, There is a June When Corn is Cut

"Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do."
-   Slim Acres 

"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade."
-  Gertrude Jekyll,  On Gardening

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville-- mighty Casey has struck out."
-   Ernest Thayer, Casey at the Bat, 1888   

"The summer morn is bright and fresh,
the birds are darting by
As if they loved to breast the breeze
that sweeps the cool clear sky."
-   William C. Bryant

"For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go."
-   George Washington Cable

"Heed not the night;
A summer lodge amid the wild is mine,
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree,
'Tis mantled by the vine."
-   William C. Bryant

" Summer makes me drowsy.  Autumn makes me sing.  Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring."
-   Dorothy Parker

"Spring being a tough act to follow,
God created June."
-   Al Bernstein 

"Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer.  If you're signed up for a season, see it through.  You don't have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through."
-   Jim Rohn

"Summer has two Beginnings --
Beginning once in June --
Beginning in October
Affectingly again --

Without, perhaps, the Riot
But graphicker for Grace --
As finer is a going
Than a remaining Face --

Departing then -- forever --
Forever -- until May --
Forever is deciduous
Except to those who die --"
-   Emily Dickinson, Summer Has Two Beginnings

"People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy."
-   Anton Chekhov

"Summer makes a silence after spring."
-   Vita Sackville-West

"I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer."
-   Brendan Behan

"Tell you what I like the best --
'Long about knee-deep in June,
'Bout the time strawberries melts
On the vine, -- some afternoon
Like to jes' git out and rest,
And not work at nothin' else!"
-   James Witcomb Riley, Knee Deep in June

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." 
-   Margaret Atwood 

"Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy's inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes."
-   Robert Louis Stevenson, Summer Sun 

"Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January."
-   Hal Borland

"It amazes me that most people spend more time planning next summer's vacation than they do planning the rest of their lives."
-   Patricia Fripp

"It's not the winter that bothers me - it's the summers."
-   Walt Alston

"I used to imagine him
coming from the house, like Merlin
strolling with important gestures
through the garden
where everything grows so thickly,
where birds sing, little snakes lie
on the boughs, thinking of nothing
but their own good lives,
where petals float upward,
their colors exploding,
and trees open their moist
pages of thunder --
it has happened every summer for years.

But now I know more
about the great wheel of growth,
and decay, and rebirth,
and know my vision for a falsehood.
Now I see him coming from the house --
I see him on his knees,
cutting away the diseased, the superfluous,
coaxing the new,
knowing that the hour of fulfillment
is buried in years of patience --
yet willing to labor like that
on the mortal wheel."
- Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006) 

"The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood."
-   John Burroughs

"June is bustin' out all over."
- Oscar Hammerstein II, 1945

"See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd,
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade.
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours,
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs;
When weary reapers quit the sultry field,
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless grove no lurking viper hides,
But in my breast the serpent Love abides.
Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew,
But your Alexis knows no sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where-e'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Where-e'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes."
-   Alexander Pope, Summer

"Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught. "
-   Sydney J. Harris

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains..."
-  Diane Ackerman   

"When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse."
-   Lord Byron

"The hum of bees is the voice of the garden." 
-   Elizabeth Lawrence

"In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?"
-   Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer 

"We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child."
-   James Agee

"Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year.  It brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul."
-   Billy Graham

"A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon --
A depth -- an Azure -- a perfume --
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see --

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle -- shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me --

The wizard fingers never rest --
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes it narrow bed --

Still rears the East her amber Flag --
Guides still the sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red --

So looking on -- the night -- the morn
Conclude the wonder gay --
And I meet, coming thro' the dews
Another summer's Day!"
-  Emily Dickinson, A Something in a Summer's Day

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."
-   Yoko Ono

"Spring has many American faces.  There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there.  Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England."
-   Archibald MacLeish

"Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats."
-   Woody Allen

Annie's June Holiday Page

Can Teach Summer Poems

Cuttings - June    Haiku and short poems by Michael P. Garofalo.  

Elaine's Spring Page

Folklore Calendar   

June - Links from Yahoo

June Lore   

June Poem Hunter 

Midsummer: Magical Celebrations of the Summer Solstice.   By Anna Franklin.  St. Paul, Minnesota, Llewellyn Publications, 2003.  Glossary, appendices, bibliography, index, 225 pages.  ISBN: 0738700525.  VSCL. 

Quotes for Gardeners    Over 3,500 quotes arranged by over 140 topics. 

Spring Days

Spring  -  Quotes, Poems, Sayings and Quips for Gardeners

Spring: Links and Ideas for Teachers   

Spring Poems

Spring Poetry  

Summer Poems and Poetry  110 Summer Poems

Summertime - Links for Educators

Watering on a regular basis.
Mowing lawns.
Weeding around vegetables and shrubs.
Maintenance on lawn mowing equipment.
Enjoying vegetables and fruits.
Thinning out excess fruit on trees.
Mulching with straw.
Training vines on support structures.  
Relaxing in the shade.
Enjoying annuals in bloom.