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
The flowers bloom and
the birds warble their spring notes
like a second spring.
October 23, 2020
More or less rain to-day and yesterday. October 23, 1860
October has been the month of autumnal tints. October 23, 1852
By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part. October 23, 1852
What a peculiar red has the white! And some black have now a rich brown. October 23, 1853
I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib. October 23, 1855
I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. October 23, 1858
I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a handsome clear yellow, — and some (the R. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red. October 23, 1858
I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaleaves turned a light red or scarlet. October 23, 1858
Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there. October 23, 1858
You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson. October 23, 1858
October 23, 2022
Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet. October 23, 1858
Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet. October 23, 1858
Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet. October 23, 1858
The meadow-sweet is yellowish and yellow-scarlet. October 23, 1858
Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now. October 23, 1858
Beach plum is still green with some dull red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen. October 23, 1858
The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling. October 23, 1858
The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. October 23, 1858
Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish. October 23, 1858
Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson. October 23, 1858
Viburnum Lentago, with ripe berries and dull-glossy red leaves. October 23, 1853
In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more. October 23, 1858
Panicled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen. October 23, 1858
Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen. October 23, 1858
Choke-cherries are bare; how long? October 23, 1858
Wild holly fallen. October 23, 1858
Amelanchier bare. October 23, 1858
Butternuts are bare. October 23, 1858
Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare. October 23, 1858
The prinos is bare, leaving red berries. October 23, 1853
Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. October 23, 1855
The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. October 23, 1852
The high bank-side is mostly covered with fallen leaves of pines and hemlocks, etc. . . .The fallen pine-needles, as well as other leaves, now actually paint the surface of the earth brown in the woods, covering the green and other colors, and the few evergreen plants on the forest floor stand out distinct and have a rare preeminence. October 23, 1857
The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears. October 23, 1857
Many phenomena remind 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. October 23, 1853
The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. October 23, 1853
Also a hieracium quite freshly bloomed, October 23, 1853
The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia. October 23, 1853
A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. October 23, 1852
The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved.
Witch hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. October 23, 1857
A striped snake out. October 23, 1852
I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days . . . In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. October 23, 1853
The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. October 23, 1852
The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. October 23, 1852
It is the season of fuzzy seeds, — goldenrods, everlasting, senecio, asters, epilobium, etc., etc. October 23, 1853
Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries, calls the soapwort gentian “blue vengeance,” mistaking the word. A masculine wild eyed woman of the fields. Somebody has her daguerreotype. October 23, 1857
I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. October 23, 1857
 October 23, 2016 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Hawkweeds (hieracium) A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Violets A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Pine Fall A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis) A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry) A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter  October 23, 2021 |
October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me") October 11, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is generally a dull red on a green ground, but its leaves are yet quite fresh."). October 13, 1852 ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ") October 13, 1859 ("The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. It is like a youthful or poetic thought in old age. Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. I would not fear the winter more than the shad-bush which puts forth fresh and tender leaves on its approach.") October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out.") October 18, 1857 ("Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones") October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers.") October 22, 1851 ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.") October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.") 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.”) October 25, 1853 ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.") October 26, 1855 ("The hillside is slippery with new-fallen white pine leaves") October 26, 1855 ("The witch-hazel is still freshly in flower,") October 28, 1858 ("There are now but few bright leaves to be seen.") October 31, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is about bare") November 1, 1860 ("A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves. ") November 1, 1853 ("I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.") November 4, 1854 ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already. ") November 9, 1850 (" The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note") November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet,") December 1, 1853 ("inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")  Witch-hazel in bloom October 23, 2020 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, October 23 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 tinyurl.com/HDT23Oct |
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