Evening Kosmos.

 August 31

Proserpinaca palustris, spear-leaved proserpinaca, mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard's Grove on my way to Conantum.) 

A hornets' (?) nest in a rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems projecting through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these fellows avail themselves of the vegetables ! They kept arriving, the great fellows, but I never saw whence they came, but only heard the buzz just at the entrance. (With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have stood before the nest five minutes, during which time they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be consulting at the entrance, and then one made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have done.

 I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn. Examined my old friend the green locust ( ? ), shrilling on an alder leaf. What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the spring dandelion ? 

There is a rank scent of tansy now on some roads, disagreeable to many people from being associated in their minds with funerals, where it is sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. 

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. 

Galium triflorum, three-flowered cleavers, in Conant's Spring Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next year. 

Tobacco-pipe (Monotropa uniflora) in Spring Swamp Path.

 I came out of the thick, dark, swampy wood as from night into day. Having forgotten the daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon sun illumining all the landscape . It was a surprise to me to see how much brighter an ordinary afternoon is than the light which penetrates a thick wood. 

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would be as good a symbol, emblem, of the year's fertility as anything, - better surely than a bunch of grapes. Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash ( ? ).The vintage is come; the olive is ripe. 

"I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year; "

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls, - in a potato field ?  

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine, who never saw a vineyard, who obtains his liquor from the grocer, who would not dare, if he could, tell him what it is composed of. A Yankee singing in praise of wine! It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes; the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. 

It seemed to me that the year had nothing so much to brag of as these potato balls. Do they not concern New-Englanders a thousand times more than all her grapes ? In Moore's new field they grow, cultivated with the bog hoe, manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they take to the virgin soil ! 

Shannon tells me that he took a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden, cleared, turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, making a coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted potatoes. He never put a hoe to it till he went to dig them; then between 8 o'clock A. M. and 5 P. M. he and another man dug and housed seventy - five bushels apiece !! 

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped now with black on stout red pedicels, - Actœa alba. Collinsonia Canadensis, horseweed  I had discovered this singular flower there new to me, and, having a botany by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappointment, what an insult and impertinence to my curiosity and expectation, to have given me the name " horse- weed ! " 

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four. Among rarer plants it contains the basswood, the black ( as well as white ) ash, the fever - bus, the cohush, the collinsonia, not to mention sassafras, poison sumach, ivy, agrimony, Arum triphyllum, ( sweet viburnum ( ? ) in hedges near by ), ground - nut, touch-me- not ( as high as your head ), and Eupatorium purpureum ( eight feet, eight inches high, with a large convex corymb ( hemi-spherical ) of many stories, fourteen inches wide; width of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter of stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl ). 

Rare plants seem to love certain localities. As if the original Conant had been a botanist and endeavored to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum ? The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on one cheek. It was the filiform crowfoot ( Ranunculus filiformis ) that I saw by the riverside the other day and to - day. The season advances apace.

 The flowers of the nettle-leaved vervain are now near the ends of the spike, like the blue. Utricularia inflata, whorled bladderwort, floating on the water at same place. Gentiana Saponaria budded. Gerardia flava at Conant's Grove. 

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff, when, looking up from my botanizing ( I had been examining the Ranunculus filiformis, the Sium latifolium ( ?? ), and the obtuse galium on the muddy shore), I saw the seal of evening on the river. There was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and the willows and pads even more than before. His rays then fell at right angles on their stems. 

I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots? ) Sometimes their tops are submerged. The cardinal-flowers standing by me. The trivialness of the day is past. The greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favorable to thought. (The pensive eve.) 

The coolness of evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and distinct, and chaste  (chaste eve); even as I am made more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought. After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life. 

The evening air is such a bath for both mind and body. When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial, - as well field and wood as highway, - then at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. 

I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving beauty. Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties begin to be fed, to feel their oats, their nutriment, and are not oppressed by the belly's load. It is abstinence from loading the belly anew until the brain and divine faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does my food invigorate my brain, - ascendeth into the brain. We practice at this hour an involuntary abstinence. We are comparatively chaste and temperate as Eve herself; the nutriment is just reaching the brain.

 Every sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat which a man is launching on the rocky bottom, though here is no man nor inhabited house, nor even cultivated field, in sight, this is heard with such distinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [ sic ] music.

 The attractive point is that line where the water meets the land, not distinct, but known to exist. The willows are not the less interesting because of their nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read of South American primitive forest, is the scenery of this river! What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud along its sides! These old antehistoric, geologic  ante-diluvian rocks, which only primitive wading birds, still lingering among us, are worthy to tread. 

The season which we seem to live in anticipation of is arrived. The water, indeed, reflects heaven because my mind does; such is its own serenity, its transparency and stillness. With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from me and feel my fresh vigor, who have been bathing in the same tub which the muskrat uses! Such a medicated bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and the dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and generous was nature! My inheritance is not narrow. Here is no other this evening. 

Those resorts which I most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are, are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were an autocrat or owner of the world, and by my edicts excluded men from my territories. Perchance there is some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries. 

There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Concord, and yet I find such ample space and verge, even miles of walking every day in which I do not meet nor see a human being, and often not very recent traces of them . So much of man as there is in your mind, there will be in your eye . Methinks that for a great part of the time, as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing the advantages of human culture, fresh from society of men, but turned loose into the woods, the only man in nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if man and his customs and institutions were not . 

The catbird, or the jay, is sure of the whole of your ear now. Each noise is like a stain on pure glass. The rivers now, these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the supernal skies and red-tinted cloud. 

A fly (or gnat ?) will often buzz round you and persecute you like an imp. How much of imp-like, pestering character they express ! ( I hear a boy driving home his cows . ) 

What unanimity between the water and the sky! - one only a little denser element than the other. The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so large a scale ! 

Standing on distant hills, you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?

 We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming from the noon, the other leading to the night. It might be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view of the sunset and the rising stars;

• if there were two persons whose pulses beat together, 
• if men cared for the κόσμος, or beauty of the world; 
• if men were social in a high and rare sense; 
• if they associated on high levels;
• if we took in with our tea a draught of the transparent, dew-freighted evening air;
• if, with our bread and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky;
• if the smoking, steaming urn were the vapor on a thousand lakes and rivers and meads. 

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled essence of all those fragrances which during the day have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmosphere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these low vales ! 

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of money we did not come to terms. But I have farmed it in my own fashion every year since.

 I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they have identified themselves with them. There may be a few Kalmias. But it must be done very sparingly, or, rather, discriminatingly, and no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his love. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1851

One made a threatening dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint. See August 7, 1854 ("A wasp stung me at one high blueberry bush on the forefinger of my left hand, just above the second joint. It was very venomous;. . . and the finger soon swelled much below the joint, so that I could not completely close the finger,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

There is a rank scent of tansy now.  See August 9, 1851 ("Tansy now in bloom and the fresh white clethra")

Why not for my coat-of -arms, for device, a drooping cluster of potato balls. See July 28, 1860 ("A man shows me in the street a single bunch of potato-balls . . . to some extent emulating a cluster of grapes. The very sight of them supplies my constitution with all needed potash.")

The κόσμος, or beauty of the world. See August 6, 1852 ("All men beholding a rainbow begin to understand the significance of the Greek epithet applied to the world, — name for the world, — - Kosmos, or beauty"); January 5, 1856 ("Order, κóσμos.")

I have not observed much St. John's-wort yet. See September 1, 1853 ("Johnswort, the large and common, is about done.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The pensive eve. See August 31, 1852 ("Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water.")

I have no objection to giving the names of some naturalists, men of flowers, to plants . . . no man's name be used who has not been such a lover of flowers. See June 13, 1852 ("But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York. . .If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. . . .Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers.")

Saw Ktaadn from a hill.

September 24

Saturday. 

Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor on the road to Pushaw. It is about eighty miles from Bangor. This was the nearest point from which we made out to see it. 

In the afternoon, walked up the Kenduskieg. 

White golden-rod, fall dandelion, hog peanut, Solidago arguta and altissima, Aster macrophyllus (?), and red maple (?). 

Witch-hazel well out. 

Epilobium coloratum, Solidago squarrosa, S. latifolia, Aster cordifolius (?). 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1853

Saw Ktaadn from a hill about two miles northwest of Bangor See September 21, 1853 ("Rained all day, which prevented the view of Ktaadn, otherwise to be seen in very many places . . . Reached Bangor at dark.")

The Kenduskeag Stream flows from the northwest into the Penobscot at Bangor.

White golden-rod . . . Solidago arguta and altissima . . . Solidago squarrosa, S. latifolia. See September 24, 1854 ("Solidago nemorosa . . . generally withered or dim"); September 24, 1856 ("Early S. stricta, done some time. . . S. altissima, much past prime . . . S. bicolor . . . in prime . . S. lalifolia, in prime..") See also  July 31, 1857 ("The commonest solidago on the East Branch, Solidago squarrosa."): August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season"); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are, lst, stricta. . .; 2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last); 3d, altissima, though commonly only a part of its panicles; 4th, nemoralis, just beginning generally to bloom. Then there is the odora, 5th, out some time, but not common; and, 6th, the bicolor, just begun in some places"); August 24, 1853 ("The altissima . . . is just beginning to be abundant. Its tops a foot or more broad, with numerous recurved racemes on every side, with yellow and yellowing triangular points. It is the most conspicuous of all . . . Solidago latifolia not yet."); August 31, 1853 (" The Solidago altissima is now the prevailing . . . goldenrod, in low grounds where the swamp has been cleared. It occupies acres, densely rising as high as your head"); September 1, 1856 ("Solidago stricta, still very abundant, though probably a little past prime. S. gigantea, say in prime. S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant. S. altissima, perhaps in prime. S. odora, in prime, or maybe a little past. . . .S. bicolor, not quite in prime, but common . . .S. latifolia, not yet at all.");  September 6, 1856 ("Solidago arguta very common, apparently in prime"); September 15, 1856 ("Early Solidago stricta (that is, arguta) done "); September 12, 1859 ("The golden-rod on the top and the slope of the hill are the Solidago nemoralis, at the base the taller S. altissima. ); September 16, 1857 ("Solidago latifolia in prime at Botrychium Swamp.");  September 21, 1856 ("Solidago altissima past prime . . .[On top of Cliff, behind the big stump] is a great place for white goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees.");  October 2, 1856 ("Solidago bicolor considerably past prime"); October 6, 1858 ("Solidago latifolia in bloom still, but always sparingly."); October 8, 1856 ("S. latifolia, far gone."); October 11, 1856 ("The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees."); October 20, 1852 ("Tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. ");September 19, 1857("Solidago arguta variety done, say a week or more.") [Solidago arguta in old usage, or (misapplied) solidago stricta, is solidago juncea (early goldenrod) ~Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts; see September 11, 1857 ("My old S. stricta (early form) must be S. Arguta var. juncea.")]

A footpath may be found encircling all our ponds.

November 9. 

Tuesday. 

November 9, 2020

Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. 

A late three ribbed goldenrod, with large serratures in middle of the narrow leaves, ten or twelve rays. Potentilla argentea.

Fore part of November time for walnutting.

All around Walden, both in the thickest wood and where the wood has been cut off, there can be traced a meandering narrow shelf on the steep hillside, the footpath worn by the feet of Indian hunters, and still occasionally trodden by the white man, probably as old as the race of man here. And the same trail may be found encircling all our ponds.

Near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, I have seen from a boat, in calm weather, broad circular heaps of small stones on the bottom, half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot or more in height, where all around was bare sand, - probably the work of some kind of fish.

The French call dragon-flies “demoiselles.”


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1852

Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus. See October 20, 1852 ("Tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. ");  November 2, 1853 ("I might put by themselves the November flowers, — flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf."); November 3, 1853 ("To-day I see yarrow, very bright "); November 3, 1853 ("I saw a very fresh A. undulatus this afternoon."); November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom"); November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet."); November 12, 1853 ("Tansy is very fresh still in some places"); November 14, 1852 ("Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy."); November 18, 1852 ("Yarrow and tansy still. These are cold, gray days."); November 18, 1855 ("Tansy still shows its yellow disks, but yarrow is particularly fresh and perfect, cold and chaste, with its pretty little dry-looking rounded white petals and green leaves."); November 22, 1853 ("Yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent"); November 23, 1852 ("Among the flowers which may be put down as lasting thus far, as I remember, in the order of their hardiness: yarrow, tansy (these very fresh and common), cerastium, autumnal dandelion, dandelion, and perhaps tall buttercup, etc., the last four scarce. The following seen within a fortnight: a late three-ribbed goldenrod of some kind, blue-stemmed goldenrod (these two perhaps within a week), Potentilla argentea, Aster undulatus, Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata, shepherd's-purse").  See also  December 6, 1852 ("Tansy still fresh."); December 12, 1852 ("Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge."); December 19, 1859 ("Yarrow too is full of seed now")

Fore part of November time for walnutting. See October 27, 1857 ("Now it is time to look out for walnuts"); October 28, 1852 ("The boys are gathering walnuts."); November 20, 1858 ("When walnut husks have fairly opened, showing the white shells within, — the trees being either quite bare or with a few withered leaves at present, — a slight jar with the foot on the limbs causes them to rattle down in a perfect shower, and on bare, grass-grown pasture ground it is very easy picking them up."); December 5, 1856 ("There are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has scattered many over the snow-crust. It would be easier gathering them now than ever. “); December 10, 1856 ("Gathered this afternoon quite a parcel of walnuts on the hill. It has not been better picking this season there. They lie on the snow, or rather sunk an inch or two into it. And some trees hang quite full.")

 The footpath worn by the feet of Indian hunters. See February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs.”) See  also  Walden, The Ponds ("I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hill side, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo.")

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look.

September 28.

September 28, 2014

A considerable part of the last two nights and yesterday, a steady and rather warm rain, such as we have not had for a long time. This morning it is still completely overcast and drizzling a little.

Flocks of small birds — apparently sparrows, bobolinks (or some bird of equal size with a pencilled breast which makes a musical clucking), and piping goldfinches 

— are flitting about like leaves and hopping up on to the bent grass stems in the garden, letting themselves down to the heavy heads, either shaking or picking out a seed or two, then alighting to pick it up.

I am amused to see them hop up on to the slender, drooping grass stems; then slide down, or let themselves down, as it were foot over foot, with great fluttering, till they can pick at the head and release a few seeds; then alight to pick them up. They seem to prefer a coarse grass which grows like a weed in the garden between the potato-hills, also the amaranth.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. They say that this has been a good year to raise turkeys, it has been so dry. So that we shall have something to be thankful for.

Hugh Miller, in his “Old Red Sandstone,” speaking of  “the consistency of style which obtains among the ichthyolites of this formation” and the “microscopic beauty of these ancient fishes,” says: 

“The artist who sculptured the cherry stone consigned it to a cabinet, and placed a microscope beside it; the microscopic beauty of these ancient fish was consigned to the twilight depths of a primeval ocean.

There is a feeling which at times grows upon the painter and the statuary, as if the perception and love of the beautiful had been sublimed into a kind of moral sense.

Art comes to be pursued for its own sake; the exquisite conception in the mind, or the elegant and elaborate model, becomes all in all to the worker, and the dread of criticism or the appetite of praise almost nothing.

And thus, through the influence of a power somewhat akin to conscience, but whose province is not the just and the good, but the fair, the refined, the exquisite, have works prosecuted in solitude, and never intended for the world, been found fraught with loveliness."

The hesitation with which this is said — to say nothing of its simplicity betrays a latent infidelity more fatal far than that of the “Vestiges of Creation,” which in another work this author endeavors to correct.

He describes that as an exception which is in fact the rule.

The supposed want of harmony between “the perception and love of the beautiful” and a delicate moral sense betrays what kind of beauty the writer has been conversant with. He speaks of his work becoming all in all to the worker, his rising above the dread of criticism and the appetite of praise, as if these were the very rare exceptions in a great artist's life, and not the very definition of it.

2 P. M. – To Conantum.

A warm, damp, mistling day, without much wind.

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled, — reminding me of some plants like the milkweed, expanding with maturity and pushing off their downy seeds. They have a singularly soft look.

For a week or ten days I have ceased to look for new flowers or carry my botany in my pocket.

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime.

I see where the squirrels have carried off the ears of corn more than twenty rods from the corn-field into the woods. A little further on, beyond Hubbard's Brook, I saw a gray squirrel with an ear of yellow corn a foot long sitting on the fence, fifteen rods from the field. He dropped the corn, but continued to sit on the rail, where I could hardly see him, it being of the same color with himself, which I have no doubt he was well aware of.

He next took to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal himself behind the stem, hanging perfectly still there till I passed, his fur being exactly the color of the bark. When I struck the tree and tried to frighten him, he knew better than to run to the next tree, there being no continuous row by which he might escape; but he merely fled higher up and put so many leaves between us that it was difficult to discover him.

When I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared entirely, though I kept the best watch I could, and stood close to the foot of the tree.

They are wonderfully cunning.

The Eupatorium purpureum is early killed by frost and stands now all dry and brown by the sides of other herbs like the goldenrod and tansy, which are quite green and in blossom.

The railroads as much as anything appear to have unsettled the farmers. Our young Concord farmers and their young wives, hearing this bustle about them, seeing the world all going by as it were, — some daily to the cities about their business, some to California, — plainly cannot make up their minds to live the quiet, retired, old-fashioned, country-farmer's life. They are impatient if they live more than a mile from a railroad.

While all their neighbors are rushing to the road, there are few who have character or bravery enough to live off the road. He is too well aware what is going on in the world not to wish to take some part in it. I was reminded of this by meeting S. Tuttle in his wagon.

The pontederia, which apparently makes the mass of the weeds by the side of the river, is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it.

The mist is so thin that it is like haze or smoke in the air, imparting a softness to the landscape.

Sitting by the spruce swamp in Conant's Grove, I am reminded that this is a perfect day to visit the swamps, with its damp, mistling, mildewy air, so solemnly still.  There are the spectre-like black spruces hanging with usnea moss, and in the rear rise the dark green pines and oaks on the hillside, touched here and there with livelier tints where a maple or birch may stand, this so luxuriant vegetation standing heavy, dark, sombre, like mould in a cellar. The peculiar tops of the spruce are seen against this.

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays, who make a great cry about nothing.

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, and the button-bush. The balls of the last appear not half grown this season,-probably on account of the drought, and now they are killed by frost.

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.  They ray out around the dry scape and flower, which still remain, resting on rich uneven beds of a coarse reddish moss, through which the small flowered andromeda puts up, presenting altogether a most rich and luxuriant appearance to the eye. 

Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet. I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher-plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. 

These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these.  Old Josselyn called this "Hollow-leaved Lavender." No other plant, methinks, that we have is so remarkable and singular.

Here was a large hornets' nest, which when I went to take and first knocked on it to see if anybody was at home, out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day, unless because the swamp is warmer. They were all within and not working, however.

I picked up two arrowheads in the field beyond.

What honest, homely, earth-loving, unaspiring houses they used to live in! Take that on Conantum for instance, so low you can put your hand on the eaves behind. There are few whose pride could stoop to enter such a house to-day. And then the broad chimney, built for comfort, not for beauty, with no coping of bricks to catch the eye, no alto or basso relievo.

The mist has now thickened into a fine rain, and I retreat.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1851

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled.  See September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them. ,")  See also September 29, 1857 ("Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves."); October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast."); October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish."); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall.") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The pontederia is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it. See August 22, 1860 ("Now, when the mikania is conspicuous, the bank is past prime, - for lilies are far gone the pontederia is past prime, willows and button-bushes begin to look the worse for the wear thus early"); September 2, 1859 ("The pontederia leaves are now decidedly brown or brownish"); September 5, 1860 ("The pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened"); September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water"); September 17, 1852 ("The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river."); September 18, 1858 ("I see one pontederia spike rising blue above the surface. Elsewhere the dark withered pontederia leaves show themselves, and at a distance look like ducks,  and so help conceal them."); September 26, 1859 ("The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. . . . Many are long since bare. "); October 16, 1859 ("This may not be an annual phenomenon to you.. . ., but it has an important place in my Kalendar. So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia")

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays.                                                 

The red squirrels scold

and the jays scream while you are

clubbing and shaking trees.

October 11, 1852

See also September 21, 1854 ("I hear many jays since the frosts began.”); September 24, 1857 ("A red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality."); September 25, 1851 ("In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native."); September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); September 25, 1857 ("Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels."); October 5, 1857 ("I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel."); December 1, 1857 (" I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, See September 28, 1856 ("How many fruits are scarlet now! — barberries, prinos, etc."); See also August 20, 1854 ("Prinos berries have begun to redden."); August 23, 1853 ("Barberries have begun to redden, and the prinos, — some of the last quite red."); September 2, 1852 ("The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.");September 5, 1858 ("To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening."); September 11, 1859 ("The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red."); September 12, 1851 ("The prinos berries are pretty red."); September 21, 1856 ("Prinos berries."); September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered. "); September 25, 1859 ("Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days"); October 10, 1857 ("To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare");  October 23, 1853 ("The prinos is bare, leaving red berries."); November 2, 1853 ("The prinos berries are almost gone."); November 25, 1858 ("The prinos berries on their light-brown twigs are quite abundant and handsome.") and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”):

The fresh bright scarlet

prinos berries seen in prime

amid fresh green leaves.

October 2, 1856

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.")  See also e.g.  June 12, 1852 ("The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially."); September 11, 1851("We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation?"); November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ); November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day. See September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance."); . October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

September 28.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 28

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Scarlet berry season.

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 © 2009-2024

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Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

September 3.




Why was there never a poem on the cricket? Its creak seems to me to be one of the most prominent and obvious facts in the world, and the least heeded. In the report of a man's contemplations I look to see somewhat answering to this sound.

When I sat on Lee's Cliff the other day (August 29th), I saw a man working with a horse in a field by the river, carting dirt; and the horse and his relation to him struck me as very remarkable. There was the horse, a mere animated machine, — though his tail was brushing off the flies, his whole existence subordinated to the man's, with no tradition, perhaps no instinct, in him of independence and freedom, of a time when he was wild and free, completely humanized.

No compact made with him that he should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any holidays. His independence never recognized, it being now quite forgotten both by men and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am not aware that there are any wild horses known surely not to be descended from tame ones.

Assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread it over the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping, and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time to time, on his own account, all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worthwhile that he should be animated for this. It was plain that the man was not educating the horse; not trying to develop his nature, but merely getting work out of him.

That mass of animated matter seemed more completely the servant of man than any inanimate. For slaves have their holidays; a heaven is conceded to them, but to the horse none. Now and forever he is man's slave.

The more I considered, the more the man seemed akin to the horse; only his was the stronger will of the two.

For a little further on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that to a certain extent his independence be recognized, and yet really he was but little more independent.

I had always instinctively regarded the horse as a free people somewhere, living wild. Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild, — not tamed and broken by society.

Now for my part I have such a respect for the horse's nature as would tempt me to let him alone; not to interfere with him, --  his walks, his diet, his loves. But by mankind he is treated simply as if he were an engine which must have rest and is sensible of pain.

Suppose that every squirrel were made to turn a coffee-mill! 

Suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts! 

There he was with his tail cut off, because it was in the way, or to suit the taste of his owner; his mane trimmed, and his feet shod with iron that he might wear longer.

What is a horse but an animal that has lost its liberty? 

What is it but a system of slavery? and do you not thus by insensible and unimportant degrees come to human slavery? 

Has lost its liberty! - and has man got any more liberty himself for having robbed the horse, or has he lost just as much of his own, and become more like the horse he has robbed?

Is not the other end of the bridle in this case, too, coiled round his own neck?

Hence stable-boys, jockeys, all that class that is daily transported by fast horses.

There he stood with his oblong square figure (his tail being cut off) seen against the water, brushing off the flies with his tail and stamping, braced back while the man was filling the cart.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that, though no man is quite well or healthy, yet every one believes practically that health is the rule and disease the exception, and each invalid is wont to think himself in a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor to another state of existence. But it may be some encouragement to men to know that in this respect they stand on the same platform, that disease is, in fact, the rule of our terrestrial life and the prophecy of a celestial life.

Where is the coward who despairs because he is sick? 

Every one may live either the life of Achilles or of Nestor.

Seen in this light, our life with all its diseases will look healthy, and in one sense the more healthy as it is the more diseased. Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. It is, nevertheless, a cheering fact that men affirm health unanimously, and esteem themselves miserable failures.

Here was no blunder. They gave us life on exactly these conditions, and me thinks we shall live it with more heart when we perceive clearly that these are the terms on which we have it.

Life is a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the body answer to the troubles and defeats of the spirit. Man begins by quarrelling with the animal in him, and the result is immediate disease.

In proportion as the spirit is the more ambitious and persevering, the more obstacles it will meet with. It is as a seer that man asserts his disease to be exceptional.

2 P. M. — To Hubbard's Swimming-Place and Grove in rain.

As I went under the new telegraph-wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high overhead. It was as the sound of a far-off glorious life, a supernal life, which came down to us, and vibrated the lattice-work of this life of ours.?

The melons and the apples seem at once to feed my brain.

Here comes a laborer from his dinner to resume his work at clearing out a ditch notwithstanding the rain, remembering as Cato says, per ferias potuisse fossas veteres tergeri, that in the holidays old ditches might have been cleared out. One would think that I were the paterfamilias come to see if the steward of my farm has done his duty.

The ivy leaves are turning red.

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows.

How much the Roman must have been indebted to his agriculture, dealing with the earth, its clods and stubble, its dust and mire.

Their farmer consuls were their glory, and they well knew the farm to be the nursery of soldiers.

Read Cato to see what kind of legs the Romans stood on.

The leaves of the hardhack are somewhat appressed, clothing the stem and showing their downy under sides like white, waving wands. Is it peculiar to the season, or the rain, -- or the plant? 

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, -- the hypericums, for instance. They are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops.

Some farmers have begun to thresh and winnow their oats.

Identified spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata), apparently out of blossom.

Shepherd's-purse and chickweed.

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities "are gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the encroachments of the proprietors." He proposes that the people's right to them be asserted and defended and that they be kept in a passable state at the public expense. "This," says he, “would be easily done by means of asphalt laid upon a good foundation" !!! So much for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neighborhood of English large towns.

Think of a man -- he may be a genius of some kind -- being confined to a highway and a park for his world to range in! I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement. I should hesitate before I were born, if those terms could be made known to me beforehand. Fenced in forever by those green barriers of fields, where gentlemen are seated! Can they be said to be inhabitants of this globe? Will they be content to inhabit heaven thus partially?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1851

Disease is not the accident of the individual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. Compare December 11. 1855 ("Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions. They are the rule and character. It is the exception that we see and hear ")

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows. See August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place."); September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon.."); September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, See September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides.")  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.

September 25

September 25, 2020

Polygonum dumetorum, climbing false-buck wheat, still; also dodder.

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river.

Ranunculus reptans still.

The small galium (trifidum).

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected.

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed.

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red.

Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st, and the fringed gentian November 7th, last year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1852

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. See September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower."); see also August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp"): October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case."); November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. See June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”);  July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?)."); September 8, 1853 ("Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

An ancient cellar is uncovered.

September 22.

A mizzling day, with less rain than yesterday, filling the streams.

As I went past the Hunt cellar, where Hosmer pulled down the old house in the spring, I thought I would see if any new or rare plants had sprung up in that place which had so long been covered from the light. 

I was surprised to find there Urtica wrens (?), very fresh and in bloom, one to three feet high, with ovate deeply cut leaves, which I never saw before; also Nicotiana, probably Tabacum (not the wild one), in flower, and Anethum graveolens (?), or dill, also in flower. 

I had not seen either of the last two growing spontaneously in Concord before. It is remarkable that tobacco should have sprung up there. Could the seed have been preserved from a time when it was cultivated there? [I learn that it was formerly cultivated in Concord, but Temple, who has raised a little for two years past a mile and a quarter west of this, thinks he is the only one who has cultivated any in C. of late years.] Also the Solanum nigrum, which is rare in Concord, with many flowers and green fruit. 

The prevailing plants in and about this cellar were mallows, Urtica urens, rich-weed (very rank), catnep, Chenopodium Botrys, Solanum nigrum, chickweed, Bidens frondosa, etc. 

It is remarkable what a curse seems to attach to any place which has long been inhabited by man. Vermin of various kinds abide with him. It is said that the site of Babylon is a desert where the lion and the jackal prowl. If, as here, an ancient cellar is uncovered, there springs up at once a crop of rank and noxious weeds, evidence of a certain unwholesome fertility, — by which perchance the earth relieves herself of the poisonous qualities which have been imparted to her.  As if what was foul, baleful, grovelling, or obscene in the inhabitants had sunk into the earth and infected it. 

Certain qualities are there in excess in the soil, and the proper equilibrium will not be attained until after the sun and air have purified the spot. The very shade breeds saltpetre. Yet men value this kind of earth highly and will pay a price for it, as if it were as good a soil for virtue as for vice. 

In other places you find henbane and the Jamestown-weed and the like, in cellars, — such herbs as the witches are said to put into their caldron. It would be fit that the tobacco plant should spring up on the house-site, aye on the grave, of almost every householder of Concord. 

These vile weeds are sown by vile men. 

When the house is gone they spring up in the corners of cellars where the cider-casks stood always on tap, for murder and all kindred vices will out. And that rank crowd which lines the gutter, where the wash of the dinner dishes flows, are but more distant parasites of the host. 

What obscene and poisonous weeds, think you, will mark the site of a Slave State? — what kind of Jamestown-weed? There are mallows for food, — for cheeses, at least; rich-weed for high living; the nettle for domestic felicity, — a happy disposition; black nightshade, tobacco, henbane, and Jamestown-weed as symbols of the moral atmosphere and influences of that house, the idiocy and insanity of it; dill and Jerusalem-oak and catnep for senility grasping at a straw; and beggar-ticks for poverty.

I see the fall dandelions all closed in the rain this afternoon. Do they, then, open only in fair or cloudy forenoons and cloudy afternoons? 

There is mallow with its pretty little button-shaped fruit, which children eat and call cheeses, — eaten green. There are several such fruits discoverable and edible by children. 

The mountain-ash trees are alive with robins and cherry-birds nowadays, stripping them of their fruit (in drooping clusters). It is exceedingly bitter and austere to my taste. Such a tree fills the air with the watch-spring-like note of the cherry-birds coming and going.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1859

As I went past the Hunt cellar, where Hosmer pulled down the old house in the spring. See note to September 21, 1855 ("Stopped at the old Hunt house")

I see the fall dandelions all closed in the rain this afternoon. Do they, then, open only in fair or cloudy forenoons and cloudy afternoons? See September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon."); September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon."); November 4, 1855 ("The autumnal dandelion sheltered by this apple-tree trunk is drooping and half closed and shows but half its yellow, this dark, late wet day in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The mountain-ash trees are alive with robins and cherry-birds nowadays. See September 1, 1859 ("The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town.")

September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor

September 11. 

P.M. — To Conantum-end. 

The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red.

By the pool in Hubbard's Grove, I see tall tupelos, all dotted with the now ripe (apparently in prime) small oval purple berries, two or three together on the end of slender peduncles, amid the reddening leaves. This fruit is very acid and has a large stone, but I see several robins on the trees, which appear to have been attracted by it. Neither tree nor fruit is generally known, and many liken the former when small to a pear. The trees are quite full of fruit. 

The wax-like fruit of Cornus paniculata still holds on abundantly. 

This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.

The Rhus Toxicodendron berries are now ripe and greenish-yellow, and some already shrivelled, over bare rocks. 

September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor. 

The clusters of the Viburnum Lentago berries, now in their prime, are exceedingly and peculiarly handsome, and edible withal. These are drooping, like the Cornus sericea cymes. Each berry in the cyme is now a fine, clear red on the exposed side and a distinct and clear green on the opposite side. Many are already purple, and they turn in your hat, but they are handsomest when thus red and green. 

The large clusters of the Smilacina racemosa berries, four or five inches long, of whitish berries a little smaller than a pea, finely marked and dotted with vermilion or bright red, are very conspicuous. I do not chance to see any ripe. 

No fruit is handsomer than the acorn. I see but few fallen yet, and they are all wormy. Very pretty, especially, are the white oak acorns, three raying from one centre. 

I see dill and saffron still, commonly out at R. W. E.'s.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1859



September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor. See September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower.") See also August 27, 1856 ("There are many wild-looking berries about now.");  September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white."); September 1, 1856 ("Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome. A few medeola berries ripe."); September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground . . . The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves."); ); September 3, 1856 (A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. "); September 4, 1859 (See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long").

The clusters of the Viburnum Lentago berries, now in their prime, are exceedingly and peculiarly handsome, and edible withal. See August 21, 1853 ("The Viburnum Lentago berries are but just beginning to redden on one cheek.”); August 23, 1853 (".How handsome now the cymes of Viburnum Lentago berries, flattish with red cheeks!”); August 25, 1852 ("The fruit of the Viburnum Lentago is now very handsome, with its sessile cymes of large elliptical berries, green on one side and red with a purple bloom on the other or exposed side, not yet purple, blushing on one cheek.”);    August 27, 1854 (Some Viburnum Lentago berries, turned blue before fairly reddening."); . August 27, 1856 ("The Viburnum Lentago begin to show their handsome red cheeks, rather elliptic-shaped and mucronated, one cheek clear red with a purplish bloom, the other pale green, now. Among the handsomest of berries, one half inch long by three eighths by two eighths, being somewhat flattish"); August 30, 1853 ("Viburnum Lentago berries are now common and handsome");September 1, 1854 ("The Viburnum Lentago are just fairly begun to have purple cheeks."); September 13, 1856 ("The Viburnum Lentago, which I left not half turned red when I went up-country a week ago, are now quite black-purple and shrivelled like raisins on my table, and sweet to taste, though chiefly seed."); Also see A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, The Viburnum lentago (Nannyberry)

September  – the month 

when various berries  hang

in cymes and clusters.

The drought ceases with the dog-days.

July 27. 

8 a. m. — Rains, still quite soakingly. 

June and July perhaps only are the months of drought. The drought ceases with the dog-days. 

P. M. — To White Pond in rain. 

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. 

Solidago lanceolata also, a few days probably, though only partially open.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 27, 1853

The drought ceases with the dog-days. See July 24, 1854 ("A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May."); July 31, 1855 ("Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season"); August 15, 1858 ("It is the season of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather.")

The autumnal dandelion now appears more abundantly within a week. See August 4. 1854 ("The autumnal dandelion is now more common.");  September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill")