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