Women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.

September 5. 

Friday. 

September 5.

To Brattleboro, Vt. 

Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts ? 

As I ride along in the cars, I think that the ferns, etc., are browned and crisped more than usual at this season, on account of the very wet weather. 

Found on reaching Fitchburg that there was an interval of three and a half hours between this and the Brattleboro train, and so walked on, on the track, with shouldered valise. Had observed that the Nashua River in Shirley was about one mile west of Groton Junction, if I should ever want to walk there. 

Observed by railroad, in Fitchburg, low slippery elm shrubs with great, rough, one-sided leaves. 

Solidago lanceolata past prime, a good deal. Aster puniceus in prime. 

About one mile from West Fitchburg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elderberries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this. 

As I was walking through Westminster, I remembered that G. B. Emerson says that he saw a handsome clump of the Salix lucida on an island in Meeting-House Pond in this town, and, looking round, I saw a shrub of it by the railroad, about one mile west of West Fitchburg depot, and several times afterward within a mile or two. Also in the brook behind Mr. Alcott's house in Walpole, N. H. 

Took the cars again in Westminster. The scenery began to be mountainous and interesting in Royalston and Athol, but was more so in Erving. 

In Northfield first observed fields of broom-corn very common, Sorghum saccharatum, taller than corn. Alcott says they bend down the heads before they gather them, to fit them for brooms. 

Hereabouts women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1856