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| August 29, 2019 |
I hear in the street this morning a goldfinch sing part of a sweet strain.
It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field.
When the very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights, then, too, the first cooler airs of autumn begin to waft my sweetness on the desert airs of summer. Now, too, poets nib their pens afresh. I scent their first-fruits in the cool evening air of the year.
By the coolness the experience of the summer is condensed and matured, whether our fruits be pumpkins or grapes.
Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.
I find that the water-bugs (Gyrinus) keep amid the pads in open spaces along the sides of the river all day, and, at dark only, spread thence all over the river and gyrate rapidly. For food I see them eating or sucking at the wings and bodies of dead devil's-needles which fall on the water, making them too gyrate in a singular manner. If one gets any such food, the others pursue him for it.
There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night.
P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country.
The vernonia is one of the most conspicuous flowers now where it grows, — a very rich color. It is some what past its prime; perhaps about with the red eupatorium.
Botrychium lunarioides now shows its fertile frond above the shorn stubble in low grounds, but not shedding pollen.
See the two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries, many of them ripe; also some ripe mitchella berries, contrasting with their very fresh green leaves.
White cohush berries, apparently in prime, and the arum fruit. The now drier and browner (purplish- brown) looking rabbit's clover, whose heads collected would make a soft bed, is an important feature in the landscape; pussies some call them; more puffed up than before.
The thorn bushes are most sere and yellowish-brown bushes now.
I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green.
The slate-colored spots or eyes — fungi — on several kinds of goldenrods are common now.
The knife-shaped fruit of the ash has strewn the paths of late.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1859
It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. See August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire .") See also September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun"); September 17, 1858 (“Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings.”); September 18, 1852("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)
The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off."); August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house");August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first.");
Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.See November 14, 1853. ("October answers to that period in the life of man when . . . all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit".)
I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. See September 3, 1858 ("See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad"); September 13, 1858 (""Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss") October 18, 1857 (" Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones.")
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