It is glorious November weather.

November 22, 2017

November.

Perhaps its harvest of thought

is worth more than 

all the other crops of the year.

November.

The month of withered leaves

and bare twigs and limbs.

November.

The landscape, prepared for winter,

without snow.

November.

The clear, white, leafless twilight. 

The bare branches of the oak woods

awaiting the onset of the wind.

November.

Now a man will eat his heart, 

now while the earth is bare,

barren and cheerless.

The coldness of winter

without the variety of ice and snow.

But how bright 
the November stars! 

Still man beholds 

the inaccessible beauty
 around him.

November.
The bare, bleak, hard, and 

barren-looking  tawny pastures. 

The firm outline of the hills.

 The air so bracing and wholesome. 

It is glorious November weather,
and only November fruits are out.

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 ©  2009-2018

See November11, 1858; October 28, 1852;  October 30, 1853; November 14, 1853; November 27, 1853; November 22, 1860;; see also November 25, 1857 ("Nature has herself become like the few fruits which she still affords,  a very thick-shelled nut with a shrunken meat within.”)

A Book of the Seasons: October 31.

October 31.

Saunterer's apple

not even the saunterer

can eat in the house.

October 31, 1851

Frosts in the mornings,

open window for a week.

Indian summer.

October 31, 1854

It is a fine day,

Indian-summer-like, more

to be expected.

October 31, 1858

October 31, 2016

October trees show

the colors they sail under.

Each runs up its flag.

October 31, 1858

I hear flailing and

draw near to it from the woods,

thinking many things.

October 31, 1860

*****

 

Ever since October 27th we have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week. October 31, 1854

After walking for a couple of hours the other day through the woods, I came to the base of a tall aspen, which I do not remember to have seen before, standing in the midst of the woods in the next town, still thickly leaved and turned to greenish yellow. October 31, 1858

I made a minute of its locality, glad to know where so large an aspen grew. Then it seemed peculiar in its solitude and obscurity. October 31, 1858

It is a beautiful , warm and calm Indian - summer afternoon. October 31, 1853   

When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the waves upon the bank and bushes and withered grass. October 31, 1853

I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day . I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem or rush to another , sometimes seven or eight feet distant , horizontally and only four or five inches above the water . When I look further , I find that they are everywhere and on everything , sometimes forming conspicuous fine white gossamer webs on the heads of grasses.  October 31, 1853   

Rain; still warm. October 31, 1854

It is a fine day, Indian—summer-like, and there is considerable gossamer on the causeway and blowing from all trees.  October 31, 1858

Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumn that this phenomenon is seen.   October 31, 1853

The wild apples are now getting palatable. October 31, 1851

The saunterer's apple not even the saunterer can eat in the house. The noblest of fruits is the apple. Let the most beautiful or swiftest have it. October 31, 1851

The robins now fly in flocks. October 31, 1851

On the hill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping. October 31, 1853

The hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones . The cones are mostly open. October 31, 1853

Now appears to be the very time for walnuts. I knock down showers with a stick, but all do not come out of the shells. October 31, 1853  

I believe I have not bathed since Cattle-Show. It has been rather too cold, and I have had a cold withal.  October 31, 1853

I hear the sound of the flailing in M. Miles's barn, and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things. October 31, 1860

Is not this already November , when the yellow and scarlet tints are gone from the forest ?  October 31, 1853

Now, walking in a different direction, to the same hilltop from which I saw the scarlet oaks, and looking off just before sunset, when all other trees visible for miles around are reddish or green, I distinguish my new acquaintance by its yellow color . . . It is as if it recognized me too, and gladly, coming half-way to meet me.  October 31, 1858

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Gossamer Days

*****

September 14, 1859 ("Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, . . .for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns.")
October 15, 1856 ("A great part of the hemlock seeds fallen.")

October 20, 1857 ("The barberry bushes are now alive with, I should say, thousands of robins feeding on them.")
October 20, 1858 ("Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons.")

October 24, 1852 ("I see, far over the river, boys gathering walnuts.”)
October 26, 1854 ("I see considerable gossamer on the causeway and elsewhere. ")

October 27, 1855 (“I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.")

October 27, 1855 (“To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. They must be eaten in the fields. . . Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind") 
October 27, 1857 ("Now it is time to look out for walnuts")
October 28, 1852 ("The boys are gathering walnuts.")

November 1, 1851 (" It is a remarkable day for fine gossamer cobwebs. Here in the causeway, as I walk toward the sun, I perceive that the air is full of them streaming from off the willows")
November 1, 1860 ("A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M . . . Gossamer on the withered grass is shimmering in the fields, and flocks of it are sailing in the air. ")
November 3, 1857 (" I see on many rocks, etc., the seeds of the barberry, which have been voided by birds, – robins, no doubt, chiefly. How many they must thus scatter over the fields, spreading the barberry far and wide! That has been their business for a month.")
November 4, 1855 ("It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild apple.“)
November 7, 1858 ("My apple harvest! It is to glean after the husbandman and the cows . . . I fill my pockets on each side, and as I retrace my steps, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, in order to preserve my balance.");
November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. . . Food for walkers.")

October 31, 2020

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 © 2009-2019

Going to the new cemetery

October 30, 2015

October 30

Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 30, 1855

The scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness. See October 30, 1858 ("The scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

I see that scarlet

oak leaves have still some brightness--

the latest of the oaks.

October 30, 1855

Scarlet oaks wither

slowly and retain brightness

to mid-November.

October 30, 1858

A Boook of the Seasons: October 30 (the fall ends, november colors, a time for buds)

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

October 30

October 30, 2018

Rain and wind bring down 

the leaves and destroy what’s left 

of the brilliancy. 

October 30, 1858 

The fall has ended. 

This is November landscape 

prepared for winter.

October 30, 1853 

Now is the time -- now 

when leaves have fairly fallen --, 

to look at the buds. 

October 30, 1853 

I see that scarlet

oak leaves have still some brightness --

the latest of the oaks.

 October 30, 1855

Scarlet oaks wither

slowly and  retain brightness

to mid-November.

October 30, 1858

There’s a very large

and complete circle around

the moon this evening

October 30, 1857

We begin to look 

to the sunset for color 

and variety. 

October 30, 1853 

Quite a sultry, cloudy afternoon, -- hot walking in woods and lowland where there is no air. October 30, 1860

Another, the eighth, day of cloudy weather, though no rain to-day. October 30, 1857

A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day. This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still. October 30, 1853

Saw a Solidago nemoralis in full flower yesterday.  October 30, 1853

Here is the autumnal dandelion and fragrant ever lasting to-day.  October 30, 1853

Rain and wind, bringing down the leaves and destroying the little remaining brilliancy.  October 30, 1858

Near the island, in my boat, I scare up a bittern (Ardea minor), and afterward half a dozen ducks, probably summer ducks October 30, 1857

The muskrat-houses are mostly covered with water now. October 30, 1853

Saw a large flock of blackbirds yesterday. October 30, 1857 

I see tree sparrows in loose flocks, chasing one an other, on the alders and willows by the brook-side.  October 30, 1853   . 

By the bathing-place, I see a song sparrow with his full striped breast. He drops stealthily behind the wall and skulks amid the bushes; now sits behind a post, and peeps round at me,  October 30, 1853

What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended. Those which still hang on the trees are withered and dry. October 30, 1853

I am surprised at the change since last Sunday. Looking at the distant woods, I perceive that there is no yellow nor scarlet there now . . . The autumnal tints are gone. October 30, 1853

The woods have for the most part acquired their winter aspect, and coarse, rustling, light-colored withered grasses skirt the river and the wood-side. October 30, 1853

This is November. The landscape prepared for winter, without snow. October 30, 1853

When the forest and fields put on their sober winter hue, we begin to look more to the sunset for color and variety. October 30, 1853

The buttonwoods are in the midst of their fall. Some are bare. They-are late among the trees of the street. October 30, 1858

Going to the new cemetery, I see that the scarlet oak leaves have still some brightness; perhaps the latest of the oaks. October 30, 1855

The scarlet oak especially withers very slowly and gradually, and retains some brightness to the middle of November,  October 30, 1858

The larger red maple buds have now two sets of scales, three in each. October 30, 1853

Now, now is the time to look at the buds of the swamp-pink,— some yellowish, some, mixed with their oblong seed-vessels, red, etc.  October 30, 1853

Along the Depot Brook, the great heads of Aster puniceus stand dry and fuzzy and singularly white, — like the goldenrods and other asters.  October 30, 1853

The prevalence of this light, dry color perhaps characterizes November, — that of bleaching withered grass, of the fuzzy gray goldenrods, harmonizing with the cold sunlight, and that of the leaves which still hang on deciduous trees. October 30, 1853

There’s a very large and complete circle round the moon this evening, which part way round is a faint rainbow. It is a clear circular space, sharply and mathematically cut out of a thin mackerel sky.   October 30, 1857

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Scarlet Oak

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow

October 12, 1851 ("The swamp-pink buds begin to show.")
October 13, 1857 ("Large flock of tree sparrows, very lively and tame, drifting along and pursuing each other along a bushy fence and ditch like driving snow.")
October 16, 1857 ("I saw some blackbirds, apparently grackles, singing, after their fashion, on a tree by the river. October 16, 1857")
October 22, 1857 ("Blackbirds go over, chattering")

October 27, 1853 ("Song sparrows flitting about, with the three spots on breast")
October 27, 1858 (“Countless sedges and grasses ...become pale-brown and bleached after the frost has killed them, and give that peculiar light, almost silvery, sheen to the fields in November.”)
October 28, 1852 ("November the month of withered leaves and bare twigs and limbs.");
October 29, 1855 ("A flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.")
October 29, 1857 ("The river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash")
October 29, 1858 ("Notwithstanding the few handsome scarlet oaks that may yet be found, and the larches and pitch pines and the few thin-leaved Populus grandidentata, the brightness of the foliage, generally speaking, is past ")



October 31, 1858 ("As I sit on the Cliff there, the sun is now getting low, and the woods in Lincoln south and east of me are lit up by its more level rays, and there is brought out a more brilliant redness in the scarlet oaks, scattered so equally over the forest, than you would have believed was in them. Every tree of this species which is visible in these directions, even to the horizon, now stands out distinctly red.")
November 1, 1858 ("If you wish to count the scarlet oaks. do it now. Stand on a hilltop in the woods, when the sun is an hour high and the sky is clear, and every one within range of your vision will be revealed")
November 2, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses are mostly covered by the rise of the river! — not a very unexpected one either. ")
November 2, 1853("Among the buds, etc., etc., to be noticed now, remember the alder and birch catkins, so large and conspicuous, — on the alder, pretty red catkins dangling in bunches of three or four")
November 3, 1852 ("[November] is the month of withered oak leaves.")
November 3, 1853 ( There are two or three tree sparrows flitting and hop ping along amid the alders and willows, with their fine silvery tchip, unlike the dry loud chip of the song sparrow. ")

November 3, 1852 ("[November] is the month of withered oak leaves.")
November 4, 1860 ("To-day also I see distinctly the tree sparrows, and probably saw them, as supposed, some days ago. Thus the birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north.")

November 5, 1855 (" Swamp-pink buds now begin to show.")

November 6, 1853 ("The red maple buds, showing three or more sets of scales. ")
November 8, 1857 ("The swamp-pink's large yellowish buds, too, are conspicuous now.")
November 11, 1851 ("The fall of the year is over, and now let us see if we shall have any Indian summer.)

October 30, 2015

 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.

  April 7, 1853 

October 29 <<<<<<<<<  October 30 >>>>>>>>  October 31

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 30

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 © 2009-2022

A hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock.

Fresh election-cake with peppered surface

October 29.

Carried my owl to the hill again. Had to shake him out of the box, for he did not go of his own accord. There he stood on the grass, at first bewildered, with his horns pricked up and looking toward me. In this strong light the pupils of his eyes suddenly. contracted and the iris expanded till they were two great brazen orbs with a centre spot merely. His attitude expressed astonishment more than anything. I was obliged to toss him up a little that he might feel his wings, and then he flapped away low and heavily to a hickory on the hillside twenty rods off. ...

I see many aphides very thick and long-tailed on the alders. 

Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. 

There are many fresh election-cake toadstools amid the pitch pines there, and also very regular higher hemispherical ones with a regularly warted or peppered surface.

As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. 

I buy no lot in the cemetery which my townsmen have just consecrated with a poem and an auction, paying so much for a choice. Here is room enough for me.

The swamp white oak has a fine, firm, leathery leaf with a silver under side, half of them now turned up. Oaks are now fairly brown; very few still red. 

Returning, I scare up a blue heron from the bathing rock this side the Island. It is whitened by its droppings, in great splotches a foot or more wide. He has evidently frequented it to watch for fish there.

Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 29, 1855

Soapwort gentian and pasture thistle still. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.  See October 29, 1857 ("A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing."); November 1, 1853 ("As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")

I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. See  October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. "); October 20, 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay.").

Election cake toadstools. See October 20, 1856 ("Amid the young pitch pines . . . a great many brownish-yellow (and some pink) election-cake fungi . . .”); July 29, 1853 (“ . . .small, umbrella-shaped (with sharp cones), shining and glossy yellow fungi, like an election cake  . .”). See also Concord: A Sense of Place, October 20, 2015, Election-cake Fungus Mystery.

Election Cake dates back to Colonial America and the young Republic.  Bakers made this “muster" cake to feed militia members in the Colonial era during military training days. After the American Revolution, it evolved into an Election Cake, one prepared for town hall meetings and community celebrations to encourage eligible voter attendance.  ~ owl bakery

A Book of the Seasons: October 29.

October 29

 

The gooseberry leaves

in our garden and in fields

are now fresh scarlet.

October 29, 1854

A flock of blackbirds

fly eastward over my head –

red-wings or grackles.

October 29, 1855

Count a hundred crows

advancing from the southeast –

a great rambling flock.

October 29,1855

Eighty crows rambling 

cawing and making a great

ado about nothing. 

October 29, 1857

I love to wander

over the leaves in their graves

returning to dust.

October 29, 1855

The water is smooth.

The sun comes out once or twice,

cocks crow as in spring. 

October 29, 1857

A tall and slender

tremuliformis still clothed

with yellowish leaves.

October 29, 1858

Birches being bare

poplars take their place, burning 

brighter than they were. 

October 29, 1858

October 29, 2021

*****

Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles. October 29, 1855

As I pass Merrick’s pasture, I see and count about a hundred crows advancing in a great rambling flock from the southeast and crossing the river on high, and cawing.  October 29, 1855 

A flock of about eighty crows flies ramblingly over toward the sowing, cawing and loitering and making a great ado, apparently about nothing. October 29, 1857

October 29, 2022

It is the most distinct tree in all the landscape.

Am surprised to see, by the path to Baker Farm, a very tall and slender large Populus tremuliformis still thickly clothed with leaves which are merely yellowish greén, later than any P. grandidentata I know . . . Afterwards, when on the Cliff, I perceive that, birches being bare (or as good as bare), one or two poplars  (tremuliformis)    take their places on the Shrub Oak Plain, and are brighter than they were, for they hold out to burn longer than the birch. October 29, 1858

With the fall of the white pine, etc., the Pyrola umbellata and the lycopodiums, and even evergreen ferns, suddenly emerge as from obscurity. If these plants are to be evergreen, how much they require this brown and withered carpet to be spread under them for effect. Now, too, the light is let in to show them. October 29, 1858 

The gooseberry leaves in our garden and in fields are equally and peculiarly fresh scarlet. October 29, 1854

Detected a large English cherry in Smith’s woods beyond Saw Mill Brook by the peculiar fresh orange-scarlet color of its leaves, now that almost all leaves are quite dull or withered.  October 29, 1854

The cultivated cherry is quite handsome orange, often yellowish.   October 29, 1858 

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me. October 29, 1855 

Again, as day before yesterday, sitting on the edge of a pine wood, I see a jay fly to a white oak half a dozen rods off in the pasture, and, gathering an acorn from the ground, hammer away at it under its foot on a limb of the oak. October 29, 1860

The birch has now generally dropped its golden spangles. October 29, 1858

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle! October 29, 1858

October 29, 2021

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Tallest Aspen

October 29, 2013

October 13, 1857 ("Our cherry trees have now turned to mostly a red orange color.")

October 18, 1855 ("There are a great many crows scattered about on the meadow. What do they get to eat there? The crows are very conspicuous, black against the green.")
October 20, 1859 ("I see a large and very straggling flock of crows fly southwest from over the hill behind Bull's and contending with the strong and cold northwest wind. This is the annual phenomenon. They are on their migrations.")

October 22, 1855("I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines,")

October 26, 1857 (“Yellowish leaves still adhere to the very tops of the birches.”); 

October 26, 1860 (“The season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches.”)

October 27, 1860 (“I see a jay, which was screaming at me, fly to a white oak eight or ten rods from the wood in the pasture and directly alight on the ground, pick up an acorn, and fly back into the woods with it. This was one, perhaps the most effectual, way in which this wood was stocked with the numerous little oaks which I saw under that dense white pine grove.”)

October 28, 1854 (“Birches, which began to change and fall so early, are still in many places yellow.”)

October 28, 1860 ("See a very large flock of crows.")

November 1, 1851 ("Counted one hundred and twenty five crows in one straggling flock moving westward. ")
November 1, 1853 ("As I go up the back road, I am struck with the general stillness as far as birds are concerned.. . .I only hear some crows toward the woods. . . . As I return, I notice crows flying southwesterly in a very long straggling flock, of which I see probably neither end.")
November 11, 1853 ("I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood.")

 November 14, 1853 ("Now for the bare branches of the oak woods, where hawks have nested and owls perched, the sinews of the trees, and the brattling of the wind in their midst. For, now their leaves are off, they've bared their arms, thrown off their coats, and, in the attitude of fencers, await the onset of the wind..")

November 18, 1857 ("Crows will often come flying much out of their way to caw at me.")

October 29. 2019

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 © 2009-2009