The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852
With cooler weather
green and leafy thoughts acquire
color and flavor.
The corn-stalks standing
in stacks in long rows along
edges of corn-fields.
With their shrill whistle
tell-tales sailing in a flock
showing their white tails.
Cheered by this aster
let the traveller bethink
himself elevate
and expand his thoughts –
a poet-philosopher
has passed this way.
September 14, 2017
This wind has strewn the Fair Haven Hill-side with apples. September 14, 1859
Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns. September 14, 1859
A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones. September 14, 1851
This morning the first frost. September 14, 1852
Is not the colder and frosty weather thus introduced by a rain? i. e. it clears up cold. September 14, 1852
The grass is very green after the rains. September 14, 1852
River still rising; at 4 p. m. one and an eighth inches higher than in morning. September 14, 1860
The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets. September 14, 1851
We see half a dozen herons in this voyage. . . . It is remarkable how common these birds are about our sluggish and marshy river. September 14, 1854
A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock,—a sailing (or skimming) flock, that is something rare methinks, — showing their white tails, to alight in a more distant place. September 14, 1854
The Bidens Beckii is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory . . . Full of the sun. It needs a name. September 14, 1854
Half a dozen Bidens chrysanthemoides in river, not long. September 14, 1858
 |
Bidens cernua Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks, or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside. |
The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have petals, little cream pitchers. September 14, 1851
Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty,
See October 2, 1856
(“Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)
See August 17, 1851
("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala,
in damp ground, with red or purple heads.")
The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white. September 14, 1851
The Spiranthes cernua has a sweet scent like the clethra's. September 14, 1859
.jpg)
Spiranthes cernus
[nodding ladies' tressses orchid]
To Hubbard's Close . . . I see no fringed gentian yet. September 14, 1855
To Hubbard's Close. Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th. September 14, 1856.
Blue vervain still. September 14, 1852
Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. September 14, 1856.
cheered by the sight of
an Aster Novae-Angliae
an Aster Novae-Angliae
How ever unexpected are these later flowers! September 14, 1856.
You thought that Nature had about wound up her affairs. . . .and now, to your surprise, these ditches are crowded with millions of little stars. . . ., mingled with nettles and beggar-ticks as a highway harvest. A starry meteoric shower, a milky way, in the flowery kingdom in whose aisles we travel. September 14, 1856.
I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream before the strong cool wind, which here strikes it from the north. September 14, 1851
The cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed. September 14, 1851
As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. September 14, 1851
September 15, 1852 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost.")
Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. When we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth, our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and pechance a sweet nuttiness at last, worth your cracking. September 14, 1859
Let the traveller bethink himself, elevate and expand his thoughts somewhat, that his successors may oftener hereafter be cheered by the sight of an Aster Novae-Angliae or spectabilis here and there, to remind him that a poet or philosopher has passed this way.
September 14, 2018
*****
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala
A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Fringed Gentian
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Aster Tradescanti
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Bees
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Vervain
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Bidens Beckii
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September
*****
September 14, 2018
June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”)
July 4, 1853 ("Polygala sanguinea.")
July 6, 1854 ("Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.")
July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out.")
July 13, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea, some time, Hubbard's Meadow Path; say meadow-paths and banks.")
July 6, 1854 ("Polygala sanguinea, apparently a day or more.")
July 13, 1852 ("The Polygala sanguinea and P. cruciata in Blister's meadow, both numerous and well out.")
July 13, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea, some time, Hubbard's Meadow Path; say meadow-paths and banks.")
July 16, 1854 ("The Polygala sanguinea heads in the grass look like sugar-plums.");July 17, 1852 ("The caducous polygala has the odor of checkerberry at its root, and hence I thought the flower had a fugacious, spicy fragrance.")
July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge.")
July 23, 1853 (" The rhexia is seen afar on the islets, — its brilliant red like a rose. It is fitly called meadow-beauty. Is it not the handsomest and most striking and brilliant flower since roses and lilies began? ")
July 29, 1856 ("Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down.")
July 29, 1856 ("Rhexia. Probably would be earlier if not mowed down.")
July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . ., just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life")
July 31, 1856 ("As I am going across to Bear Garden Hill, I see much white Polygala sanguinea with the red in A. Wheeler's meadow")
July 31, 1856 ("As I am going across to Bear Garden Hill, I see much white Polygala sanguinea with the red in A. Wheeler's meadow")
July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years.")
August 1, 1856 ("They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow. Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over. We, dwelling and walking on the dry upland, do not suspect their existence")
August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")
August 1, 1856 ("They make a splendid show, these brilliant rose-colored patches . . Yet few ever see them in this perfection, unless the haymaker who levels them, or the birds that fly over the meadow. Far in the broad wet meadows, on the hummocks and ridges, these bright beds of rhexia turn their faces to the heavens, seen only by the bitterns and other meadow birds that fly over. We, dwelling and walking on the dry upland, do not suspect their existence")
August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")
August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness? . . .Already some of my small thoughts — fruit of my spring life — are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds.");\
August 13, 1856 (“Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, . . . etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic?“)
August 17, 1851 ("For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour. The coolness concentrated your thought. . . I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! . . . My life flows with a deeper current.")
August 17, 1851 ("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads.")
August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?)
August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail")
August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.")
August 20, 1851("The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.")
August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea")
August 23, 1858 ("The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime")
August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”)
August 23, 1858 ("The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime")
August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”)
August 27, 1856 (" See no fringed gentian yet. ")
August 28, 1859 ("The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack.")
August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: . . . Polygala sanguinea, etc.")
August 30, 1856 "The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, it is a matter of private rejoicing.")September 2, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian")
September 3, 1856("I look for fringed gentian.")
September 3, 1854 ("In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described.")
September 3, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian.")
September 5, 1856 ("Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts ?")
September 3, 1856 ("Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian.")
September 5, 1856 ("Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts ?")
September 7, 1857 ("Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather")
Sepember 8, 1854 ("Many green-briar leaves are very agreeably thickly spotted now with reddish brown, or fine green on a yellow or green ground, producing a wildly variegated leaf. I have seen nothing more rich . . . It excites me to a sort of autumnal madness. My thoughts break out like them, spotted all over, yellow and green and brown. Now for the ripening year!")
September 10, 1853 ("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees")
September 10, 1854 ("The first fall rains after the long drought.Already the grass both in meadows and on hills looks greener, and the whole landscape, this overcast rainy day, darker and more verdurous.")
September 12, 1854 ("I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian.")
September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river")
September 13, 1851 ("The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. . . . Both this and the caducous polygala are now some what faded.")
September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls");
September 13, 1852 (" The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn. It yellows along the brook.")
September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.")
September 13, 1858 ("Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall.")
September 13, 1859 ("The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. [Iin this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn.")
 |
| September 14, 2017 |
September 15, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua in prime.")
September 15, 1859 ("This morning the first frost in the garden, killing some of our vines.")
September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green.")
September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round. It is agreeable to stand in a new relation to the sun.")
September 18, 1854 ("Fringed gentian near Peter’s out a short time, . . ., it may after all be earlier than the hazel.”)
September 18, 1856 ("The gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel.")
September 18, 1856 ("The gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel.")
September 18, 1856 ("On account of freshet I have seen no Bidens Beckii nor chrysanthmoides.")
September 18, 1859 ("From the observation of this year I should say that the fringed gentian opened before the witch-hazel")
September 21, 1854 ("The first frost in our yard last night,")
September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday.")
September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday.")
September 28, 1858 ("Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia.")
September 29, 1857 ("I hear that some have gathered fringed gentian.")
October 1, 1858 ("The fringed gentians are now in prime.")
October 1, 1858 ("The fringed gentians are now in prime.")
October 2, 1856 (“The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)
October 14, 1856 ("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.")
October 19, 1852 ("It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom.”)
October 20, 1856 ("Owing to the great height of the river, there has been no Bidens Beckii . . . this year. ")
October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things.")
October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things.")
November 8, 1858 ("Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week.")
January 30, 1854 ("It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought.")
September 14, 2022
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 14
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality.”~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
https://tinyurl.com/HDT14September
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