A misty morning followed by a still, cloudy, misty day, through which has fallen a very little rain this forenoon already. Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden.
P. M. — Along river to E. Hosmer’s. A very little mizzling. The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks. I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain. It wets my feet much.
The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. They are so abundant as to be a great ornament to our causeways and riverside. The white berried, too, is now in prime. The Viburnum dentatum berries are smaller and duller. The Viburnum Lentago are just fairly begun to have purple cheeks.
Even this rain or mizzling brings down many leaves of elms and willows, etc.,—the first, to notice, since the fall of the birches which began so long ago.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1854
The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. See August 31, 1856 ("The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now . ."); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, . . .."). See also September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower.")
The fall of the birches... (due to drought). See August 19, 1854 ("Many white birches long since lost the greater part of their leaves, which cover the ground, sere and brown as in autumn."
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