The coming harvest.

July 29

Apples now by their size remind me of the harvest. I see a geranium leaf turned red in the shade of a copse; the same color with the woodbine seen yesterday. 

These leaves interest me as much as flowers. I should like to have a complete list of those that are the first to turn red or yellow. How attractive is color, especially red; kindred this with the color of fruits in the harvest and skies in the evening. 

The colors which some rather obscure leaves assume in the fall in dark copses or unobserved by the roadside interest me more than their flowers. 

Blue-curls and wormwood springing up everywhere, with their aroma, – especially the first, – are quite restorative. It is time we had a little wormwood to flavor the somewhat tasteless or cloying summer, which palls upon the taste. 

That common rigid narrow-leaved faint-purplish aster in dry woods by shrub oak path, Aster linariifolius of Bigelow, but it is not savory leaved. I do not find it in Gray.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 29, 1852

These leaves interest me as much as flowers. See May 21, 1860 (“The birches by the railroad, as I am whirled by them in the cars, flash upon me yellow as gamboge, their leaves more like flowers than foliage.”)

Blue-curls and wormwood springing up everywhere. See.July 11, 1853 ("The aromatic trichostema now springing up.");  July 31, 1856 ("Trichostema has now for some time been springing up in the fields, giving out its aromatic scent when bruised, and I see one ready to open.");  August 13, 1856  ("Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic? ");See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

That common rigid narrow-leaved faint-purplish aster in dry woods. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Savory-leaved aster

July 29. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 29

That common rigid 

narrow-leaved faint-purplish

 aster in dry woods

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024