One remove further from summer.

October 17.

Surveying for Loring.

October 17, 2021

A severe frost this morning, which puts us one remove further from summer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1851

A severe frost this morning. See October 17, 1856 ("Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect") See also September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings"); September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings")

The summer concludes

with the crisis of first frosts.

The end of berries.

September 23, 1854

September 26, 1858 ("Another smart frost, making dry walking amid the stiffened grass in the morning."); September 28, 1860 ("This morning we had a very severe frost, the first to kill our vines, etc., in garden; what you may call a black frost, - making things look black. Also ice under pump."); September 29, 1860 ("Another hard frost and a very cold day."); September 30, 1860 ("Frost and ice."); October 1, 1852 ("A severer frost last night"); October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white.”); October 10, 1857 ("Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this.")

The most brilliant days

in the year ushered in by

a frosty morning.

October 10, 1857

October 11, 1859 ("There was a very severe frost this morning"); October 11, 1857 ("Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest."); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish."); October 14, 1860 ("This year, on account of the very severe frosts, the trees change and fall early, or fall before fairly changing."); October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); October 15, 1856 (“A smart frost . . . . Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.”); October 30, 1853 ("A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day. This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still. . . .What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended."); December 21, 1854 (“We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning.”)

One remove further from summer.   See  October 17, 1858 ("At this season of the year, when the evenings grow cool and lengthen and our winter evenings with their brighter fires may be said to begin.") See also October 2, 1857 ("The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you.");  October 10, 1851 ("The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard.”); October 12, 1852 ("A new carpet of pine leaves is forming in the woods. The forest is laying down her carpet for the winter."); October 12, 1856 ("Wasps for some time looking about for winter quarters."); October 13, 1860 (" the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish"); October 13, 1851 ("The alert and energetic man leads a more intellectual life in winter than in summer"); October 14, 1852 ("Flowers are fast disappearing. Winter may be anticipated."); October 14, 1852 ("Jays and chickadees are oftener heard in the fall than in summer."); October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees . . .resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”); October 16, 1859 (" The broad, shallow water on each side, bathing the withered grass, looks as if it were ready to put on its veil of ice at any moment. . . . I seem to hear already the creaking, shivering sound of ice there, broken by the undulations my boat makes. So near are we to winter. "); October 20, 1856 ("Thus, of late, when the season is declining, many birds have departed, and our thoughts are turned towards winter . . . we hear the jay again more frequently, and the chickadees are more numerous and lively and familiar and utter their phebe note.");  October 27, 1851 ("The cold numbs my fingers. Winter, with its inwardness, is upon us. A man is constrained to sit down, and to think.")