The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
September 19, 2014
In an old pasture
I follow the cow-paths to
the old apple trees.
And in the distance
a maple by the water
beginning to blush.
To live each season
as if nothing else to do
but live each season.
A month or more of
huckleberrying for every
man woman and child.
We hear it as if
we heard it not and forget
it immediately.
Yellow butterflies.
One flutters safely between
the horse and wagon.
I see the effects of frost on the Salix Purshiana, imbrowning their masses; and in the distance is a maple or two by the water, beginning to blush. September 19, 1852
That drought was so severe that a few trees here and there—birch, maple, chestnut, apple, oak—have lost nearly all their leaves. September 19, 1854
As I stand on the shore of the most westerly Cassandra Pond but one, I see in the air between me and the sun those interesting swarms of minute light-colored gnats, looking like motes in the sun . . . . Do they not first appear with cooler and frosty weather, when we have had a slight foretaste of winter? September 19, 1858 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)
See many yellow butterflies in the road this very pleasant day after the rain of yesterday. One flutters across between the horse and the wagon safely enough, though it looks as if it would be run down. September 19, 1859
Do I see wood tortoises on this branch only? September 18, 1855
I see large flocks of robins with a few flickers, the former keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping. September 19, 1854
Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately. In spring it makes its due impression, and for a long time will not have done echoing, as it were, through our minds. It is even as if the atmosphere were in an unfavorable condition for this kind of music. Every musician knows how much depends on this.
Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? September 19, 1854
The soapwort gentian now. September 19, 1851
The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, -- solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown. September 19, 1852
The polygala and the purple gerardia are still common and attract by their high color. September 19, 1852
The red capsules of the sarothra. September 19, 1852
The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. September 19, 1852
Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside. September 19, 1851
The Viola lanceolata has blossomed again, and the lambkill. September 19, 1852
I see the oxalis and the tree primrose and the Norway cinquefoil and the prenanthes and the Epilobium coloratum and the cardinal-flower and the small hypericum and yarrow, and I think it is the Ranunculus repens, between Ripley Hill and river, with spotted leaves lingering still . . . What pretty six-fingered leaves the three oxalis leafets make! September 19, 1852
Viburnum Lentago berries now perhaps in prime, though there are but few blue ones. September 19, 1854
Gather just half a bushel of barberries on hill in less than two hours, or three pecks to-day and yesterday in less than three hours September 19, 1856
Gather just half a bushel of barberries on hill in less than two hours, or three pecks to-day and yesterday in less than three hours. It is singular that I have so few, if any, competitors. I have the pleasure also of bringing them home in my boat. They will be more valuable this year, since apples and cranberries are scarce. These barberries are more than the apple crop to me, for we shall have them on the table daily all winter, while the two barrels of apples which we lay up will not amount to so much. September 19, 1856
I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage . . . I cannot overstate this advantage . . . It has been my vacation, my season of growth and expansion, a prolonged youth. September 19 1854
I saw, some nights ago, a great deal of light reflected from a fog-bank over the river upon Monroe’s white fence, making it conspicuous almost as by moonlight from my window. September 19, 1854
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Polygala
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow Redpoll ( Palm) Warbler
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Common Barberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lambkill (Kalmia augustifolia)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Purple Gerardia (Gerardia purpurea)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Common Barberry
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian
*****
 |
| September 19, 2015 |
September 11, 1852 ("How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua.")
September 12, 1858 ("Some small red maples by water begun to redden.")
September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”)
September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill, about the oaks. Never saw them thicker in a meadow. A cool, spring-suggesting yellow. They reserve their force till this season, though they begin so early. Cool to the eye, as the creak of the cricket to the ear. ");
September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle")
September 16, 1854 ("I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now?")
September 17, 1852 ("Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers")
September 18, 1858 ("Many red maples are now partly turned dark crimson along the meadow-edge.") September 18, 1860 ("The first autumnal tints (of red maples) are now generally noticed")
September 20, 1857 ("A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there.")
September 21, 1854 ("The red maples, especially at a distance, begin to light their fires, some turning yellow, ")
September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year.")
September 23, 1852 ("The sarothra in bloom");
September 24, 1855 ("the maples are but just beginning to blush")
September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence")
September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off.")
September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water.")
September 27, 1857 ("At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum.")
September 29, 1851 ("The intense brilliancy of the red-ripe maples scattered here and there in the midst of the green oaks and hickories on its hilly shore is quite charming. They are unexpectedly and incredibly brilliant, especially on the western shore and close to the water's edge, where, alternating with yellow birches and poplars and green oaks, they remind me of a line of soldiers, redcoats and riflemen in green mixed together.")
September 30, 1854 ("I am surprised to see that some red maples, which were so brilliant a day or two ago, have already shed their leaves, and they cover the land and the water quite thickly.")October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd")
October 8, 1852 (“Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water.”)
October 19, 1856 ("I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes,. . .Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter? ")
October 7, 1857 ("Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there")
October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens, — without florets, — or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft")
October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”); October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.")
October 21, 1857 (" I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted. ")
September 19, 2014
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
September 18 <<<<<<<<< September 19 >>>>>>>> September 20
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 19
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
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