As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

September 14.

September 14, 2022

A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones.

2 P. M. To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet.

The white oak which appears to have made part of a hedge fence once, now standing in Hubbard's fence near the Corner road, where it stretches along horizontally, is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way) two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing perpendicularly out of it eighteen inches in diameter.

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come.

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.

Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, 

See October 2, 1856

(“Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form.”)

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white.

See August 17, 1851

("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, 

in damp ground, with red or purple heads.")

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.

The cold wind makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

Polygonum aviculare — knot-grass, goose-grass, or door-grass still in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1851

The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields. See July 12, 1851 ("The earliest corn is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as I walk, — its peculiar dry scent."); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing."); September 5, 1851 ("A field of ripening corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked up to dry, – an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet ripening scent. I feel as if I were an ear of ripening corn myself.")

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. See September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside! "); 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 24, 1851 ("Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

The chalices of the Rhexia Virginica, deer-grass or meadow beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now. See 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."); 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 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 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."): September 28, 1858 ("Acalypha is killed by frost, and rhexia."); 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.”)  See alao also https://bsky.app/profile/geoffwisner.bsky.social/post/3mvi7hnrmkc2e

The caducous polygala in cool places is faded almost white. See 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 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 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");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 ("The Polygala sanguinea, caducous polygala, in damp ground, with red or purple heads."); August 21, 1851 ("The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are: . . . Rhexia Virginica, . . . Polygala sanguinea,");  August 30, 1859 ("The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous-ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now: . . . Polygala sanguinea, etc."); 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 13, 1851 ("The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. . . . Both this and the caducous polygala are now some what faded."); 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."); November 8, 1858 ("Pratt says he saw a few florets on a Polygala sanguinea within a week.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Polygala

I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven Hill running up-stream See April 16, 1852 ("A succession of bays it is, a chain of lakes, . . .There is just stream enough for a flow of thought; that is all. Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs. "); July 30, 1859 ("Trying the current there, there being a very faint . . . wind, commonly not enough to be felt on the cheek or to ripple the water, . . .my boat is altogether blown up-stream, even by this imperceptible breath. . . .It is a mere string of lakes which have not made up their minds to be rivers. As near as possible to a standstill.")

tinyurl.com/HDTgrapesept14

Identifying the Attacus cecropia

January 19. 

Went to Cambridge to court. 

Dr. Harris says that my cocoons found in Lincoln in December are of the Attacus cecropia, the largest of our emperor moths. He made this drawing of the four kinds of emperor moths which he says we have.

Attacus cecropia

The cecropia is the largest. The cocoon must be right end uppermost when they are ready to come out. The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it. 

That spider whose hole I found, and which I carried him, he is pretty sure is the Lycosa fatifera. 

In a large and splendid work on the insects of Georgia, by Edwards and Smith (?), near end of last century, up-stairs, I found plates of the above moths, called not Attacus but Phaloena, and other species of Phaloena. 

He thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was a Donax or one of the Donasia (?).

In Josselyn's account of his voyage from London to Boston in 1638, he says, " June the first day in the afternoon, very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an enchanted island," etc. This kind of remark, to be found in so many accounts of voyages, appears to be a fragment of tradition come down from the earliest ac count of Atlantis and its disappearance. 

Varro, having enumerated certain writers on agriculture, says accidentally [sic] that they wrote soluta ratione, i.e. in prose. 

This suggests the difference between the looseness of prose and the precision of poetry. A perfect expression requires a particular rhythm or measure for which no other can be substituted. The prosaic is always a loose expression. 

Varro divides fences into four kinds, — unum naturale, alterum agreste, tertium militare, quartum fabrile. (Many kinds of each.) The first is the living hedge. One kind of sepes agrestis is our rail fence, and our other dead wooden farm fences would come under this head. The military sepes consists of a ditch and rampart; is common along highways; sometimes a rampart alone. The fourth is the mason's fence of stone or brick (burnt or unburnt), or stone and earth together.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1854

My cocoons found in Lincoln in December are of the Attacus cecropia, the largest of our emperor moths. See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons, wrinkled and flattish, on young alders in a meadow, three or four inches long, fastened to the main stem and branches at same time, with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them; of some great moth.")

The tull-lull of a myrtle-bird.

May 5. 

Tuesday. Building fence east of house. 

Hear the tull-lull of a myrtle-bird (very commonly heard for three or four days after). 

Have dug up in the garden this season half a dozen of those great leather-colored pupae (with the tongue-case bent round to breast like a long urn-handle) of the sphinx moth. 

First potato-worm. 

Staminate Salix rostrata, possibly yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 5, 1857

Hear the tull-lull . . .See April 19,1855 ("Hear the tull-lull of the white-throated sparrow in street”); May 4, 1855 ("Myrtle-birds numerous, and sing their tea lee, tea lee in morning. White-throated sparrows here, and numerous”); May 2, 1856 ("The tea lee of the yellow-rump warbler in the street, at the end of a cool, rainy day.”)

Staminate Salix rostrata. See  May 10, 1856 ("I see an apparently native willow, a shrub, with greenish bark and conspicuous yellow catkins, now in full bloom, apparently a little earlier than the Salix alba, but its leafets or bracts much less advanced and conspicuous."); June 6, 1856 ("That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered . . . willows . . .”); May 6, 1858 (“The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow.”)

Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson.

May 2.

Saturday. Building a fence between us and Mrs. Richardson. 

In digging the holes I find the roots of small apple trees, seven or eight feet distant and four or more inches in diameter, two feet underground, and as big as my little finger. This is two or three feet beyond any branches. They reach at least twice as far as the branches. The branches get trimmed, the roots do not.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1857