A killing frost.

September 20.

First decisive frost, killing melons and beans, browning button-bushes and grape leaves. 

September 20, 2015

P. M. — Up main stream. 

The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass, and I land and search within ten feet of it before it rises. 

See larks in flocks on meadow. See blackbirds (grackle or red-wing or crow blackbird?). 

Try to trace by the sound a mole cricket, -- thinking it a frog, — advancing from two sides and looking where our courses intersected, but in vain. 

Open a new and pretty sizable muskrat-house with no hollow yet made in it. Many tortoise-scales upon it. 

It is a sort of tropical vegetation at the bottom of the river. The palm-like potamogeton,—or ostrich plumes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1855

First decisive frost, killing melons and beans, browning button-bushes and grape leaves. See September 20, 1851 ("On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. . . .All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.")