To sit under the face of an old clock that has been ticking one hundred and fifty years!

October 3. 

October 3, 2017

The Rhus radicans also turns yellow and red or scarlet, like the Toxicodendron. 

Asters, and still more goldenrods, look quite rare now. 

See a cowbird alone. 

Getting over the wall near Sam Barrett's the other day, I had gone a few rods in the road when I met Prescott Barrett, who observed, 

“Well, you take a walk round the square sometimes.” 

So little does he know of my habits. I go across lots over his grounds every three or four weeks, but I do not know that I ever walked round the square in my life. 

How much more agreeable to sit in the midst of old furniture like Minott's clock and secretary and looking-glass, which have come down from other generations, than in  that which was just brought from the cabinet-maker's and smells of varnish, like a coffin! To sit under the face of an old clock that has been ticking one hundred and fifty years, – there is something mortal, not to say immortal, about it! A clock that began to tick when Massachusetts was a province. Meanwhile John Beatton's heavy tombstone is cracked quite across and widely opened. [It has fallen also and has been set up.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 3, 1857

The Rhus radicans also turns yellow and red or scarlet, like the Toxicodendron. Rhus radicans. Poison ivy. Also known as Rhus toxicodendron or Toxicodendron radicans.  See  March 13, 1857 ("Elliott, the botanist, says . . . [of] Rhus Toxicodendron (page 363): 'The juice which exudes on plucking the leaf-stalks from the stem of the R. radicans is a good indelible dye for marking linen or cotton.'."); March 24, 1856 (“Cut a piece of Rhus Toxicodendron resting on rock at Egg Rock, five eighths of an inch in diameter, which had nineteen rings of annual growth. It is quite hard and stiff.”);   May 12, 1855 (“Rhus radicans leafed there a day or two.”); . June 9, 1855 (“Rhus Toxicodendron on Island Rock.”);  August 19, 1856 (“Ivy berries dry and apparently ripe on the rocks (Toxicodendron)”); August 24, 1857 (“There was a dead Rhus radicans on it [a large elm]  two inches in diameter.”); September 2, 1857 (“In the botrychium swamp. . . I see a Rhus radicans running up a buttonwood which is some forty feet high . . . It is a vine one and a half and two inches wide, somewhat flattened, clinging close and flat to the tree . . .. You can hardly tell if it is alive or dead without looking upward. ”); September 4, 1857 (“At the cleft rock by the hill just west of this swamp, — call it Cornel Rock, – I found . . . quite a collection of rare plants there, – petty morel, Thalictrum dioicum, witch hazel, etc., Rhus radicans . . .”); September 30, 1857 (“Rhus Toxicodendron turned yellow and red, handsomely dotted with brown.”)

Asters, and still more goldenrods, look quite rare now. Compare October 3, 1852 ("The Aster undulates is common and fresh, also the Solidago nemoralis of Gray.")

Minott's clock.. . .A clock that began to tick when Massachusetts was a province. See September 30, 1857 ("He says that that tall clock which still ticks in the corner belonged to old John Beatton, who died before he was born; thought it was two hundred years old!!")