More dog-days. The sun, now at 9 a. m., has not yet burst through the mists. It has been warmer weather for a week than for at least three weeks before, — nights when all windows were left open, though not so warm as in June. This morning a very heavy fog. The sun has not risen clear or even handsomely for some time, nor have we had a good sunset.
P. M. — To J. Farmer's Cliff.
— sunflowers and asters and the single flowers of the goldenrod.
I once saw one as big as a milk-pan, in which a mouse had its nest.
Already I notice that the lower leaves of some catnip and a white vervain have turned. They are in fact matured, and high-colored or wine-colored like the fruits. It suggests that the whole plant tends toward an equal richness and maturity and to become one flower. It is the blush of its evening sky. I have seen some red leaves on the low choke-berry.
Now begins the vintage of their juices. Nature is now a Bacchanal, drunk with the wines of a thousand plants and berries.
The rudbeckia must have been out at least a week or more; half the buds have opened.
Cranberries show red cheeks, and some are wholly red, like varnished cherry wood.
Yesterday I ate early summer apples.
The huckleberries were many of them burst open in consequence of the copious rains.
And now it begins to rain again and compels us to return.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 6, 1853
Do not the flowers of August and September generally resemble suns and stars? See August 30, 1853 ("The sun has shone on the earth, and the goldenrod is his fruit. The stars, too, have shone on it, and the asters are their fruit.”)
August 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 6
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 © 2009-2021
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