Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet.

October 14, 2016

October 14. 

A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. 

Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness, perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. [No.]

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close. 

Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. 

The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples. 

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. 

October 14, 2018

Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered erechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. 

In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to eight feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. 

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 14, 1856

Leaves are fast falling . . . perhaps earlier than usual on account of wet. See October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing.")

Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. See October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. . . ."); October 13, 1855 ("A thick carpet of white pine needles lies now lightly, half an inch or more in thickness, above the dark-reddish ones of last year."); October 15 1858 ("White pines are in the midst of their fall");  October 16, 1855 ("How evenly the freshly fallen pine-needles are spread on the ground! quite like a carpet.") See also The October Pine Fall

Any flowers seen now may be called late ones . . . See October 20, 1852 (" . . .tansy . . ."); October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out."); October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. . . .The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression."); October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us."); November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.").