A May storm, gentle and warm – Foliage changes several shades darker in the rain seen while still cloudy.

May 19. 

Thunder-showers in the night, and it still storms, with holdings-up. A May storm, gentle and rather warm. 

The days of the golden willow are over for this season; their withered catkins strew the causeways and cover the water and also my boat, which is moored beneath them. 

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. 

The weather toward evening still cloudy and some what mizzling. 

The foliage of the young maples, elms, etc., in the street has become, since the rain commenced, several shades darker, changing from its tender and lighter green, as if the electricity of the thunder-storm may have had some effect on it. 

It is best observed while it is still cloudy; almost a bluish, no longer yellowish green, it is peculiarly rich. 

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1853

The days of the golden willow are over for this season. Compare May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing, Ah! willow, willow! These willows have yellow bark, bear yellow flowers and yellowish-green leaves, and are now haunted by the summer yellowbird and Maryland yellow-throat") See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Willows on the Causeway.

The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. See June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. See May 18, 1853 ("White ash fully in bloom."); May 18, 1853 ("The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day")

A May storm, gentle and rather warm.See May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”);  note to May 18, 1853 ("Perchance a May storm is brewing. This day it has mizzled  . . . Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage.")

The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change. Compare May 19, 1860 ("The grass and the tender leaves, refreshed and expanded by the rain, are peculiarly bright and yellowish-green when seen in a favorable light.").

May 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

Foliage changes

several shades darker in the rain

seen while still cloudy.

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 © 2009-2021

This season of the tender foliage.

May 18.

May 18, 2020

The rhodora is one of the very latest leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms. 

The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day. Its shoots have grown two inches. It is as forward as the hickory at least; more than the elm. 

A red clover in blossom. 

A geranium budded; will open in a day or two.

Surprised to see a Ranunculus Purshii open. 

A choke-cherry blossomed in a tumbler yesterday, and probably outdoors. 

Finding the Linaria Canadensis yesterday at the Cliffs on a very close search for flowers makes me think that, by looking very carefully in the most favored and warmest localities, you may find most flowers out some weeks even in advance of the rest of their kind. 

We have had no storm this spring thus far, but it mizzles to-night.  Perchance a May storm is brewing.

This day it has mizzled  — as it were a dewy atmosphere, through which for the most part the sun shines. Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage, which requires a moist air and protection against the sun. 

A singular effect produced by a mass of ferns at a little distance, some rods square, their light yellow green tops seen above the dark masses of their fruit. At first one is puzzled to account for it. 

White ash fully in bloom.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 18, 1853


The rhodora is quite leafless amid the blossoms. See May 18, 1855 ("Rhodora; probably some yesterday.") May 18, 1856 ("The rhodora there maybe to-morrow. Elsewhere I find it . . . to-day."); May 18, 1857 ("Pratt says he saw the first rhodora . . . out yesterday") See also May 14, 1859 ('Rhodora out, says C."); May 17, 1853 (“The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out.”); May 17, 1858 ("Rhodora at Clamshell well out.”)

The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day. Its shoots have grown two inches. See May 18, 1855 ("Celtis will probably shed pollen to-morrow; shoots already an inch long.") See also May 27, 1857 ("Celtis occidentalis, perhaps yesterday. How the staminate flowers drop off, even before opening!"); September 28, 1857 (" And they have cut down two or three of the very rare celtis trees, not found anywhere else in town. The Lord deliver us from these vandalic proprietors! The botanist and lover of nature has, perchance, discovered some rare tree which has sprung up by a farmer's wall-side to adorn and bless it, sole representative of its kind in these parts. Strangers send for a seed or a sprig from a distance, but, walking there again, he finds that the farmer has sent a raw Irishman. . . with axe and stub-scythe to exterminate it, and he will know it no more forever. . . .If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.")

A red clover in blossom. See June 12, 1854 (“Clover now reddens the fields.”); June 15, 1851 (“the clover gives whole fields a rich appearance, -- the rich red and the sweet-scented white. The fields are blushing with the red species as the western sky at evening.”); June 18, 1860 (“I see very distinctly the redness of a luxuriant field of clover on the top of Fair Haven Hill.”)

Finding the Linaria Canadensis yesterday at the Cliffs on a very close search for flowers makes me think that, by looking very carefully in the most favored and warmest localities, you may find most flowers out some weeks even in advance of the rest of their kind. See May 17, 1853 ("The low black berry, apparently, on Cliffs is out, earlier than else where, and Veronica arvensis, very small, obscure pale-blue flower, and, to my surprise, Linaria Canadensis."); May 22, 1855 ("Linaria Canadensis on Cliffs open.")  See also February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers."); April 10, 1855 ("As for the early sedge, who would think of looking for a flower of any kind in those dry tufts whose withered blades almost entirely conceal the springing green ones? I patiently examined one tuft after another, higher and higher up the rocky hill, till at last I found one little yellow spike low in the grass which shed its pollen on my finger. As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch. These few earliest flowers in these situations have the same sort of interest with the arctic flora, for they are remote and unobserved and often surrounded with snow.") And see A Book of  the Seasons,, by Henry Thoreau, the Earliest Flower

This season of the tender foliage, See A Book of  the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 18

Perchance a May storm is brewing. See May 17, 1852 ("Now the sun has come out after the May storm, how bright, how full of freshness and tender promise and fragrance is the new world!"); May 17, 1853 ("Does not summer begin after the May storm?”); May 19, 1853 ("A May storm, gentle and rather warm");  May 22, 1857 ("When the May storm is over, then the summer is fairly begun.");May 22, 1858 ("Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth . . . and we seem to have taken a long stride into summer.")

That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

December 6

P. M. — To Walden and Baker Bridge, in the shallow snow and mizzling rain. 

It is somewhat of a lichen day. The bright-yellow sulphur lichens on the walls of the Walden road look novel, as if I had not seen them for a long time. Do they not require cold as much as moisture to enliven them? What surprising forms and colors! Designed on every natural surface of rock or tree. Even stones of smaller size which make the walls are so finished, and piled up for what use? How naturally they adorn our works of art! 

See where the farmer has set up his post-and-rail fences along the road. The sulphur lichen has, as it were, at once leaped to occupy the northern side of each post, as in towns handbills are pasted on all bare surfaces, and the rails are more or less gilded with them as if it had rained gilt. The handbill which nature affixes to the north side of posts and trees and other surfaces. 

And there are the various shades of green and gray beside. 

Though it is melting, there is more ice left on the twigs in the woods than I had supposed. 

The mist is so thick that we cannot quite see the length of Walden as we descend to its eastern shore. The reflections of the hillsides are so much the more unsubstantial, for we see even the reflected mist veiling them. You see, beneath these whitened wooded hills and shore sloping to it, the dark, half mist-veiled water. 

For two rods in width next the shore, where the water is shallowest and the sand bare, you see a strip of light greenish two or three rods in width, and then dark brown (with a few green streaks only) where the dark sediment of ages has accumulated. 

And, looking down the pond, you see on each side successive wooded promontories — with their dim reflections — growing dimmer and dimmer till they are lost in the mist. The more distant shores are a mere dusky line or film, a sort of concentration of the mistiness. 

In the pure greenish stripe next the shore I saw some dark-brown objects above the sand, which looked very much like sea turtles in various attitudes. One appeared holding its great head up toward the surface. 

They were very weird-like and of indefinite size. I supposed that they were stumps or logs on the bottom, but was surprised to find that they were a thin and flat collection of sediment on the sandy bottom, like that which covered the bottom generally further out. 

When the breeze rippled the surface some distance out, it looked like a wave coming in, but it never got in to the shore. 

No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. Thus it is alternate snow and seeds.

Returning up the railroad, I see the great tufts of sedge in Heywood's meadow curving over like locks of the meadow's hair, above the snow.  These browned the meadow considerably. 

Then came a black maze, of alders moistened by the rain, which made a broad black belt between the former brown and the red-brown oaks higher up the hillside. 

The white pines now, seen through the mist, the ends of their boughs drooping a little with the weight of the glaze, resemble very much hemlocks, for the extremities of their limbs always droop thus, while pines are commonly stiffly erect or ascendant.

***

I took out my boots, which I have not worn since last spring, with the mud and dust of spring still on them, and went forth in the snow. That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter.

H. .D. Thoreau,  Journal, December 6, 1859

It is somewhat of a lichen day. See December 31, 1851 ("Nature has a day for each of her creatures, her creations. To-day it is an exhibition of lichens at Forest Hall.”); and note to February 7. 1959("I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture I feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar and salads. They are a sort of winter greens which we gather and assimilate with our eyes.")


No sooner has the snow fallen than, in the woods, it is seen to be dotted almost everywhere with the fine seeds and scales of birches and alders, — no doubt an ever-accessible food to numerous birds and perhaps mice. See November 4, 1860 ("The birch begins to shed its seed about the time our winter birds arrive from the north."; )December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.");See December 4 1856 ("I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth."); December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds. "); December 30, 1855 (“For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales.”); January 7, 1853 ("Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch, the small winged seeds or samarae and the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight, . . .They cover the snow like coarse bran."); January 7, 1854 ("The bird-shaped scales of the white birch are blown more than twenty rods from the trees."); January 7, 1856 ("I see birch scales (bird-like) on the snow on the river more than twenty rods south of the nearest and only birch, and trace them north to it").


That is an era, when, in the beginning of the winter, you change from the shoes of summer to the boots of winter. See November 28, 1850 ("Within a day or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Embarks in his boots for the winter voyage."); December 3, 1856 ("The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter's wood.”); December 8, 1852 ("One cannot burn or bury even his old shoes without a feeling of sadness and compassion"); compare March 30, 1860 (“It is time to begin to leave your greatcoat at home, to put on shoes instead of boots and feel lightfooted.”)

That is an era

when you change from summer shoes 

to the boots of winter.

"What do you get for lecturing now?"

April 3. 

An easterly wind and rain. 

P. M. — To White Pond. 

C. says he saw a striped snake on the 30th. 

We go by Clamshell. The water on the meadows is now visibly lowered considerably, and the tops of bushes begin to appear. The high water has stood over and washed down the base of that avalanche of sand from my new ravine, leaving an upright edge a foot high, and as it subsided gradually, it has left various parallel shore lines, with stones arranged more or less in rows along them, thus forming a regular beach of four or five rods' length. 

The baeomyces is in its perfection this rainy day.

 I have for some weeks been insisting on the beauty and richness of the moist and saturated crust of the earth. It has seemed to me more attractive and living than ever, — a very sensitive cuticle, teeming with life, especially in the rainy days. I have looked on it as the skin of a pard. And on a more close examination I am borne out by discovering, in this now so bright baeomyces and in other earthy lichens and in cladonias, and also in the very interesting and pretty red and yellow stemmed mosses, a manifest sympathy with, and an expression of, the general life of the crust. This early and hardy cryptogamous vegetation is, as it were, a flowering of the crust of the earth. Lichens and these mosses, which depend on moisture, are now most rampant. If you examine it, this brown earth-crust is not dead. 

We need a popular name for the baeomyces. C. suggests " pink mould." Perhaps " pink shot " or "eggs " would do. 

A great many oak leaves have been blown off in the late windy weather. When I disturb a leaf in the woods I find it quite dry within this rainy day. I saw the other day a long winrow of oak leaves, a foot high, washed up on the meadow-edge a quarter of a mile off, opposite Ball's Hill, whence they partly came. 

It does not rain hard to-day, but mizzles, with considerable wind, and your clothes are finely bedewed with it even under an umbrella. The rain-drops hanging regularly under each twig of the birches, so full of light, are a very pretty sight as you look forth through the mizzle from under your umbrella. In a hard rain they do not lodge and collect thus. 

I hear that Peter Hutchinson hooked a monstrous pickerel at the Holt last winter. It was so large that he could not get his head through the hole, and so they cut another hole close by, and then a narrow channel from that to the first to pass the line through, but then, when they came to pull on the line, the pickerel gave a violent jerk and escaped. Peter thinks that he must have weighed ten pounds. 

Men's minds run so much on work and money that the mass instantly associate all literary labor with a pecuniary reward. 

They are mainly curious to know how much money the lecturer or author gets for his work. They think that the naturalist takes so much pains to collect plants or animals because he is paid for it. An Irishman who saw me in the fields making a minute in my note-book took it for granted that I was casting up my wages and actually inquired what they came to, as if he had never dreamed of any other use for writing. I might have quoted to him that the wages of sin is death, as the most pertinent answer. 

"What do you get for lecturing now?" I am occasionally asked. 

It is the more amusing since I only lecture about once a year out of my native town, often not at all; so that I might as well, if my objects were merely pecuniary, give up the business. 

Once, when I was walking on Staten Island, looking about me as usual, a man who saw me would not believe me when I told him that I was indeed from New England but was not looking at that region with a pecuniary view, — a view to speculation; and he offered me a handsome bonus if I would sell his farm for him. 

I see by the White Pond path many fox-colored sparrows apparently lurking close under the lee side of a wall out of the way of the storm. Their tails near the base are the brightest things of that color — a rich cinnamon -brown — that I know. Their note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's. We get quite near them. 

Near to the pond I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk. 

The pond is quite high (like Walden, which, as I noticed the 30th ult., had risen about two feet since January, and perhaps within a shorter period), and the white sand beach is covered. 

The water being quite shallow on it, it is very handsomely and freshly ripple-marked for a rod or more in width, the ripples only two or three inches apart and very regular and parallel, but occasionally there is a sort of cell a foot long (a split closed at each end) in one. 

In some parts, indeed, it reminded me of a cellular tissue, but the last foot next the shore had no ripple-marks; apparently they were constantly levelled there. These were most conspicuous where a dark sediment, the dead wood or crumbled leaves, perchance, from the forest, lay in the furrows and contrasted with the white sand. The cells were much more numerous and smaller in proportion than I represent them. 

I find in drawing these ripple-marks that I have drawn precisely such lines as are used to represent a shore on maps, and perchance the sight of these parallel ripple-marks may have suggested that method of drawing a shore-line. I do not believe it, but if we were to draw such a lake-shore accurately it would be very similar.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1859


I see by the White Pond path many fox-colored sparrows apparently lurking close under the lee side of a wall out of the way of the storm.Their note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's. See March 23, 1858 ("A large flock of fox-colored sparrows flits by along an alder-row, uttering a faint chip like that of the tree sparrow."); March 23, 1853 ("The birds which are merely migrating or tarrying here for a season are especially gregarious now”); April 17, 1855 ("A sudden warm day, like yesterday and this, takes off some birds and adds others. It is a crisis in their career. The fox-colored sparrows seem to be gone, and I suspect that most of the tree sparrows and F. hyemalis, at least, went yesterday.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow.

I see a small hawk, larger than a pigeon hawk, fly past, — a deep brown with a light spot on the side. I think it probable it was a sharp- shinned hawk. See March 28, 1854 (“See a small slate-colored hawk, with wings transversely mottled beneath, — probably the sharp-shinned hawk.”);April 26, 1854 (“Saw probably a pigeon hawk skim straight and low over field and wood, and another the next day apparently dark slate-color.”); April 16, 1855 ( "What I call a pigeon hawk, probably sharp-shinned.”); May 8, 1854 (“Saw a small hawk flying low, about size of a robin — tail with black bars”); May 4, 1855 (“ See a small hawk go over high in the air, with a long tail and distinct from wings. . . .Was it not the sharp-shinned, or Falco fuscus? I think that what I have called the sparrow hawk falsely, and latterly pigeon hawk, is also the sharp-shinned (vide April 26th and May 8th, 1854, and April 16th, 1855), for the pigeon hawk’s tail is white-barred.”). See also  amd note to July 21, 1858 ("It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sharp-shinned Hawk

April 3. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, April 3

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

These trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky.

December 13. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

There is a fine mizzling rain, which rests in small drops on your coat, but on most surfaces is turning to a glaze. 

Yet it is not cold enough for gloves even, and I think that the freezing may be owing to the fineness of the rain, and that, if it should rain much harder, even though it were colder, it would not freeze to what it fell on. It freezes on the railroad rails when it does not on the wooden sleepers. 

Already I begin to see, on the storm side of every twig and culm, a white glaze (reflecting the snow or sky), rhyming with the vegetable core. And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads, being not yet run together. 

There is little if any wind, and the fine rain is visible only against a dark ground. 

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. 

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves, somewhat as of lichens. They are of a brighter and deeper leather-color, richer and more wholesome, hanging more straightly down than ever. They look peculiarly clean and wholesome, their tints brought out and their lobes more flattened out, and they show to great advantage, these trees hanging still with leather-colored leaves in this mizzling rain, seen against the misty sky. They are again as it were full-veined with some kind of brown sap.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 13, 1858
                 
And on those fine grass heads which are bent over in the path the fine dew-like drops are frozen separately like a string of beads. See December 15, 1855 ("The low grass and weeds, bent down with a myriad little crystalline drops, ready to be frozen .”)

There is not so much ice in Walden as on the 11th. See December 11, 1858 ("Walden is about one-third skimmed over."); December 18, 1858 ("The pond is merely frozen a little about the edges. I see various little fishes lurking under this thin, transparent ice, close up to the edge or shore, especially where the shore is flat and water shoal."); December 20, 1858 ("Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle."); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, though it was quite cold last night!"); December 25, 1858 (" Walden at length skimmed over last night, i. e. the two holes that remained open. One was very near the middle and deepest part, the other between that and the railroad.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, First Ice.

A damp day brings out the color of oak leaves. See December 18, 1859 (“The withered oak leaves, being thoroughly saturated with moisture, are of a livelier color.”) See also December 1, 1856 (“The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm,. . .Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath. ”);  December 13, 1856 (“A fine healthy and handsome scarlet oak . . .The leaves have a little redness in them.”); December 21, 1856 (“The red oak leaves are a little lighter brown than the black oak, less yellowish beneath.”);December 31, 1854 ("The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’); January 2, 1859 (“The color of young oaks of different species is still distinct, but more faded and blended, becoming a more uniform brown”)

Leather-colored leaves

seen against the misty sky

in this mizzling rain.

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses recall past winters.

December 5. 

Some sugar maples, both large and small, have still, like the larger oaks, a few leaves about the larger limbs near the trunk. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing to the twigs and stubble, so that there is quite a glaze. The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters. These humble withered plants, which have not of late attracted your attention, now arrest it by their very stiffness and exaggerated size. Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow. The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms. It is surprising how the slenderest grasses can support such a weight, but the culm is buttressed by an other icy culm or column, and the load gradually taken on. 

In the woods the drooping pines compel you to stoop. In all directions they are bowed down, hanging their heads. 

The large yellowish leaves of the black oak (young trees) are peculiarly conspicuous, rich and warm, in the midst of this ice and snow, and on the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. 

The birches are still upright, and their numerous parallel white ice-rods remind me of the recent gossamer-like gleams which they reflected. 

How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection, and poor eyes fail to discover them even then, as I have found.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1858

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.See December 26, 1855("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are."); December 5, 1859 ("The perfect silence -- the stillness and motionless of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses; it is as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled on her axle")

That salamander! See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back")

As if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun.

October 24.

A northeast storm, though not much rainfalls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.” 

This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 P. M. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (??), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighborhood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. Surely, then, while geese fly overhead we can live here as contentedly as they do at York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. We shall perchance be as well provisioned and have as good society as they. 

Let us be of good cheer, then, and expect the annual vessel which brings the spring to us without fail.

 P. M. — To Woodis Park over Hill. 

The celtis has just fallen. Its leaves were apparently a yellow green. 

The sassafras trees are bare, — how long ? — and the white ash apparently just bared. 

The locusts are bare except the tops, and in this respect those on the hills, at least, are as peculiar as birches. Some trees lose their lower leaves first, as birches and locusts; some the upper, as apples (though a few green leaves may remain on the very tips of the twigs) and generally maples, though the last fall fast. 

Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least. [Apparently mocker-nut later.]

This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. The yard is strewn with the yellow leaves of the peach and the orange and scarlet ones of the cherry. You could not spread a cloth but it would soon be strewn with them. 

Thorns and balm-of-Gilead and red mulberries bare. 

The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is reserved to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower. Every fruit, on ripening, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. 

Color stands for all ripeness and success. We have dreamed that the hero should carry his color aloft, as a symbol of the ripeness of his virtue. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest colored, the jewel of the body. The warrior’s flag is the flower which precedes his fruit. He unfurls his flag to the breeze with such confidence and brag as the flower its petals. Now we shall see what kind of fruit will succeed.

The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth as it were, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun. Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena — color and mellowness and perfectness — to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by nature. At our annual cattle-shows and horticultural exhibitions we make, as we think, a great show of fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble fate, fruits not worshipped for this chiefly; but round about and within our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone. 

The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory. 

(I have not seen the beech, but suppose it past. The Populus grandidentata and sugar maple come nearest to it, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves.)

Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scarlet, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached While those of other trees are falling around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.”   

Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen. 

In sheltered woods you [see] some dicksonia still straw-color or pale-yellow. Some thoroughwort the same color. In the shade generally you find paler and more delicate tints, fading to straw-color and white.

The deep reds and scarlets and purples show exposure to the sun. I see an intensely scarlet high blueberry— but where one leaf has overlapped another it is yellow — with a regular outline. 

That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 24, 1858

I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago.  See note to October 23, 1858 ("One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th") and October 27, 1857 ("I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm"); November 13, 1858 ("A large flock of geese go over just before night. "); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm, and, in the spring, to go north just after one, say at the end of a long April storm. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Geese in Autumn

This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. Compare  October 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind."); October 24, 1853 ("Just after dark, high southerly winds arise, but very warm, blowing the rain against the windows and roof and shaking the house.")

October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. See November 14, 1853 ("October is the month of painted leaves, of ripe leaves, when all the earth, not merely flowers, but fruits and leaves, are ripe. With respect to its colors and its season, it is the sunset month of the year, when the earth is painted like the sunset sky. This rich glow flashes round the world. This light fades into the clear, white, leafless twilight of November."); August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset."); November 2, 1853 ("We come home in the autumn twilight, which lasts long and is remarkably light, the air being purer, — clear white light, which penetrates the woods"). Also Autumnal Tints ("October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes round the world. As fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year near its setting. October is its sunset sky ; November the later twilight.") and note to October 28, 1852 ("Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.")

That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted. See October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests."); October 15, 1855 ("The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone"); October 22, 1858 ("Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets") ; October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed."); See also 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."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

October is the

red sunset sky – November

the later twilight. 

Tobacco-pipes now in their prime.

August 10

August 10, 2018

P. M. — To yew, etc. 

It is cloudy and misty dog-day weather, with a good deal of wind, and thickening to occasional rain this afternoon. This rustling wind is agreeable, reminding me, by its unusual sound, of other and ruder seasons. The most of a storm you can get now is rather exhilarating. The grass and bushes are quite wet, and the pickers are driven from the berry-field. The rabbit’s-foot clover is very wet to walk through, holding so much water. The fine grass falls over from each side into the middle of the woodland paths and wets me through knee-high. 

I see many tobacco-pipes, now perhaps in their prime, if not a little late, and hear of pine-sap. The Indian pipe, though coming with the fungi and suggesting, no doubt, a close relation to them, — a sort of connecting link between flowers and fungi, — is a very interesting flower, and will bear a close inspection when fresh. The whole plant has a sweetish, earthy odor, though Gray says it is inodorous. 

I see them now on the leafy floor of this oak wood, in families of twelve to thirty sisters of various heights,—from two to eight inches,— as close together as they can stand, the youngest standing close up to the others, all with faces yet modestly turned downwards under their long hoods. Here is a family of about twenty-five within a diameter of little more than two inches, lifting the dry leaves for half their height in a cylinder about them. 

They generally appear bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them. Springing up in the shade with so little color, they look the more fragile and delicate. They have very delicate pinkish half-naked stems with a few semitransparent crystalline-white scales for leaves, and from the sinuses at the base of the petals without (when their heads are drooping) more or less dark purple is reflected, like the purple of the arteries seen on a nude body. They appear not to flower only when upright. Gray says they are upright in fruit. They soon become black-specked, even before flowering. 

Am surprised to find the yew with ripe fruit (how long ?),— though there is a little still small and green, — where I had not detected fertile flowers. It fruits very sparingly, the berries growing singly here and there, on last year’s wood, and hence four to six inches below the extremities of the upturned twigs. It is the most surprising berry that we have: first, since it is borne by an evergreen, hemlock-like bush with which we do not associate a soft and bright-colored berry, and hence its deep scarlet contrasts the more strangely with the pure, dark evergreen needles; and secondly, because of its form, so like art, and which could be easily imitated in wax, a very thick scarlet cup or mortar with a dark-purple (?) bead set at the bottom. My neighbors are not prepared to believe that such a berry grows in Concord. 

I notice several of the hylodes hopping through the woods like wood frogs, far from water, this mizzling [day]. They are probably common in the woods, but not noticed, on account of their size, or not distinguished from the wood frog. 

I also saw a young wood frog, with the dark line through the eye, no bigger than the others. 

One hylodes which I bring home has a perfect cross on its back,— except one arm of it. 

 spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)

The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded, the refuse of the wood or shore of the pond. There was no horsehair, no twine nor paper nor other relics of art in it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1858

Springing up in the shade with so little color, they generally appear bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them.They soon become black-specked, even before flowering. See July 30, 1854 ("The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches."); September 21, 1857 ("an abundance of tobacco-pipe, which has begun to turn black at the tip of the petals and leaves. ")

A young wood frog, with the dark line through the eye, See September 12, 1857 ("I brought it close to my eye and examined it. . . . There was a conspicuous dark-brown patch along the side of the head")

One hylodes which I bring home has a perfect cross on its back. See October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — . . . the peeping of the hylodes for some time ,,,"); November 30, 1859 ("As I go home at dusk on the railroad causeway, I hear a hylodes peeping.")

The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest. See July 31, 1858 ("Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th.")

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

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 © 2009-2021

Our first fall rain makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.

September 20

Sunday. Another mizzling day. 

P. M. — To beach plums behind A. Clarke’s. 

We walked in some trodden path on account of the wet grass and leaves, but the fine grass overhanging paths, weighed down with dewy rain, wet our feet nevertheless. We cannot afford to omit seeing the beaded grass and wetting our feet. 

This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall. 

Yet there has been no drought the past summer. Vegetation is unusually fresh. Methinks the grass in some shorn meadows is even greener than in the spring. You are soon wet through by the underwood if you enter the woods, — ferns, aralia, huckleberries, etc. 

Went through the lower side of the wood west of Peter’s. 

The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis, which spread out flat and of uniform height some eighteen (?) inches above the forest floor, are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing. 

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. 

The branches of the alternate cornel are spreading and flat, somewhat cyme-like, as its fruit. 

Beach plums are now perfectly ripe and unexpectedly good, as good as an average cultivated plum. I get a handful, dark purple with a bloom, as big as a good-sized grape and but little more oblong, about three quarters of an inch broad and a very little longer. 

I got a handkerchief full of elder-berries, though I am rather late about it, for the birds appear to have greatly thinned the cymes. 

A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there. 

A pitch pine and birch wood is rapidly springing up between the Beck Stow Wood and the soft white pine grove. It is now just high and thick enough to be noticed as a young wood-lot, if not mowed down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1857

First fall rain. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night");   September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon."); September 25, 1860 ("Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon.")

The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark. See December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable, like pictures, and makes the houses more interesting, revealing but one at a time."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects"); February 6, 1852 (A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker and more primitive.); November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist...As you advance, the trees gradually come out of the mist and take form before your eyes.")  See also November 7, 1855 ("I find it good to be out this still, dark, mizzling afternoon . . .The world and my life are simplified. ")

September 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. September 20

Our first fall rain makes 

a dividing line between 

the summer and fall. 

The outlines of trees

 distinct and dark against the 

near misty background.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Our first fall rain

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-570920