It is never too late to learn.

 

October 23

October 23, 2021

It is never too late to learn. 

I observed to-day the Irishman who helped me survey twisting the branch of a birch for a withe, and before he cut it off; and also, wishing to stick a tall, smooth pole in the ground, cut a notch in the side of it by which to drive it with a hatchet. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1851

Twisting the branch of a birch for a withe. See October 1, 1851 ("There is art to be used, not only in selecting wood for a withe, but in using it. Birch withes are twisted, I suppose in order that the fibres may be less abruptly bent; or is it only by accident that they are twisted?"); August 29, 1858 ("[Farmer] calls the Viburnum nudum 'withe-wood' and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking.")

A Book of the Seasons: October 23 (autumnal tints, the fall of the leaf, witch hazel, fall flowers, seeds, nuts and berries, the pine fall, signs of spring)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

October 23.

The flowers bloom and

the birds warble their spring notes

like a second spring.

October 23, 1853

October 23, 2020

It is never too late to learn. October 23, 1851

More or less rain to-day and yesterday. October 23, 1860

October 23, 2024

October has been the month of autumnal tints.  October 23, 1852 

By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part.  October 23, 1852

What a peculiar red has the white! And some black have now a rich brown.  October 23, 1853

I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib.  October 23, 1855

I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. October 23, 1858

I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a handsome clear yellow, — and some (the R. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red.   October 23, 1858 

I detect but few Andromeda Polifolia and Kalmia glaucaleaves turned a light red or scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there.   October 23, 1858

You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson.   October 23, 1858

October 23, 2022

Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet.   October 23, 1858

The meadow-sweet is yellowish and yellow-scarlet.   October 23, 1858

Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now.   October 23, 1858

Beach plum is still green with some dull red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen.   October 23, 1858

The ledum is in the midst of its change, rather conspicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling.   October 23, 1858

The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous.     October 23, 1858

Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish.   October 23, 1858 

Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson.   October 23, 1858

Viburnum Lentago, with ripe berries and dull-glossy red leaves.   October 23, 1853

In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more.   October 23, 1858

Panicled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen.   October 23, 1858

Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen.   October 23, 1858

Choke-cherries are bare; how long?    October 23, 1858

Wild holly fallen.   October 23, 1858

Amelanchier bare.   October 23, 1858

Butternuts are bare.   October 23, 1858

Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare.  October 23, 1858

The prinos is bare, leaving red berries. October 23, 1853 

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. October 23, 1855 

The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. October 23, 1852 

The high bank-side is mostly covered with fallen leaves of pines and hemlocks, etc. . . .The fallen pine-needles, as well as other leaves, now actually paint the surface of the earth brown in the woods, covering the green and other colors, and the few evergreen plants on the forest floor stand out distinct and have a rare preeminence. October 23, 1857

The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum . . . The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears. October 23, 1857 

Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. October 23, 1853 

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. October 23, 1853 

Also a hieracium quite freshly bloomed, October 23, 1853 

The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia. October 23, 1853

A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. October 23, 1852

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved. 

October 23, 1852

Witch hazel, etc., are withered, turned brown, or yet green. October 23, 1857

A striped snake out. October 23, 1852

I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days . . . In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. October 23, 1853 

The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. October 23, 1852 

The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free.  October 23, 1852  

It is the season of fuzzy seeds, — goldenrods, everlasting, senecio, asters, epilobium, etc., etc. October 23, 1853

Sal Cummings, a thorough countrywoman, conversant with nuts and berries, calls the soapwort gentian “blue vengeance,” mistaking the word. A masculine wild eyed woman of the fields. Somebody has her daguerreotype. October 23, 1857 

I observed to-day the Irishman who helped me survey twisting the branch of a birch for a withe, and before he cut it off; and also, wishing to stick a tall, smooth pole in the ground, cut a notch in the side of it by which to drive it with a hatchet. October 23, 1851

I can find no bright leaves now in the woods. October 23, 1857

October 23, 2016

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

The Evergreen Ferns, Part Two: Aspidium spinulosum  & Aspidium cristatum

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Hawkweeds (hieracium)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Violets

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Shad-bush, Juneberry, or Service-berry (Amelanchier canadensis)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Snake

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Viburnum lentago (nannyberry)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

October 23, 2021

October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me")

October 11, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is generally a dull red on a green ground, but its leaves are yet quite fresh.").

 October 13, 1852    ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ")

 October 13, 1859 ("The shad-bush is leafing again by the sunny swamp-side. It is like a youthful or poetic thought in old age. Several times I have been cheered by this sight when surveying in former years. The chickadee seems to lisp a sweeter note at the sight of it. I would not fear the winter more than the shad-bush which puts forth fresh and tender leaves on its approach.")

October 16, 1853 ("Viola ovata out.")

October 18, 1857  ("Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones")

October 20, 1852  ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers.")

October 22, 1851  ("The pines, both white and pitch, have now shed their leaves, and the ground in the pine woods is strewn with the newly fallen needles.")

October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.")  

October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us.”)    

October 25, 1853  ("The ground is strewn with pine-needles as sunlight.")

October 26, 1855  ("The hillside is slippery with new-fallen white pine leaves")

October 26, 1855  ("The witch-hazel is still freshly in flower,")

October 28, 1858 ("There are now but few bright leaves to be seen.")

October 31, 1858 ("The Viburnum Lentago is about bare")

November 1, 1860  ("A striped snake basks in the sun amid dry leaves. ")

November 1, 1853  ("I notice the shad-bush conspicuously leafing out. Those long, narrow, pointed buds, prepared for next spring, have anticipated their time. I noticed some thing similar when surveying the Hunt wood-lot last winter.")

November 4, 1854  ("The shad-bush buds have expanded into small leaflets already. ")

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

November 9, 1850 (" The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note")

November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet,") 

December 1, 1853 ("inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")

Witch-hazel in bloom

October 23, 2020

 If you make the least correct

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

October 22 <<<<<<<<<  October 23. >>>>>>>>  October 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 23

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022

tinyurl.com/HDT23Oct

October has been the month of autumnal tints.

October 23. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

This may be called an Indian-summer day. 

It is quite hazy withal, and the mountains invisible. I see a horehound turned lake or steel-claret color. The yellow lily pads in Hubbard's ditch are fresh, as if recently expanded. There are some white lily pads in river still, but very few indeed of the yellow lily. A pasture thistle on Conantum just budded, but flat with the ground. The fields generally wear a russet hue. 

A striped snake out.

The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds. 

The bass has lost its leaves. 

I see where boys have gathered the mockernut, though it has not fallen out of its shells. 

The red squirrel chirrups in the walnut grove. 

The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.

The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored. 

Is it the procumbent speedwell (Veronica agrestis) still in flower on Lee's Cliff? But its leaves are neither heart-ovate nor shorter than the peduncles. 
.

     

             October 23, 2020                                                     October 23, 2024

                (Avesong)                                                                     (Avesong)

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air, and recurved

The pennyroyal stands brown and sere, though fragrant still, on the shelves of the Cliff. 

The elms in the street have nearly lost their leaves. 

October 23, 2024

October has been the month of autumnal tints. 

October 22, 2020

October 23, 2016

The first of the month the tints began to be more general, at which time the frosts began, though there were scattered bright tints long before; but not till then did the forest begin to be painted. By the end of the month the leaves will either have fallen or besered and turned brown by the frosts for the most part. 

Also the month of barberries and chestnuts. 

My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. 

A stranger takes me for something else than I am. We do not speak, we cannot communicate, till we find that we are recognized. The stranger supposes in our stead a third person whom we do not know, and we leave him to converse with that one. It is suicide for us to become abetters in misapprehending ourselves. Suspicion creates the stranger and substitutes him for the friend. I cannot abet any man in misapprehending myself. 

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in barrooms and elsewhere, but it does not-deserve the name of virtue.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1852


The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines. See October 13, 1852    ("It is a clear, warm, rather Indian-summer day. . . The chickadees take heart, too, and sing above these warm rocks. ")See also October 10, 1851 ("flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me");; November 9, 1850 (" The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping a note");  December 1, 1853 ("inquisitively hop nearer and nearer to me. They are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances, and deserve best of any of the walker.")

The chickadee

Hops near to me.

November 8, 1857

 See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

The sprays of the witch-hazel are sprinkled on the air.  See October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

I cannot excuse myself for using the stone.

October 23

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

The streets are strewn with buttonwood leaves, which rustle under your feet, and the children are busy raking them into heaps, some for bonfires. 

The large elms are bare; not yet the buttonwoods. 

The sugar maples on the Common stand dense masses of rich yellow leaves with a deep scarlet blush,—far more than blush. They are remarkably brilliant this year on the exposed surfaces. The last are as handsome as any trees in the street. 

I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib. 

I plucked three leaves from the end of a red maple shoot, an underwood, each successively smaller than the last, the brightest and clearest scarlet that I ever saw. These and the birch attracted universal admiration when laid on a sheet of white paper and passed round the supper table, and several inquired particularly where I found them. I never saw such colors painted. They were without spot; ripe leaves.

The small willows two or three feet high by the road side in woods have some rich, deep chrome-yellow leaves with a gloss. The sprouts are later to ripen and richer-colored. 

The pale whitish leaves (I horehound in damp grassy paths, with its spicy fruit in the axils, are tinged with purple or lake more or less. - 

Going through what was E. Hosmer’s muck-hole pond, now almost entirely dry, the surface towards the shore is covered with a dry crust more or less cracked, which crackles under my feet. I strip it up like bark in long pieces, three quarters of an inch thick and a foot wide and two long. It appears to be composed of fine mosses and perhaps utricularia and the like, such as grow in water. A little sphagnum is quite conspicuous, erect but dry, in it. 

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. 

But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone. It is not innocent, it is not just, so to maltreat the tree that feeds us. I am not disturbed by considering that if I thus shorten its life I shall not enjoy its fruit so long, but am prompted to a more innocent course by motives purely of humanity. I sympathize with the tree, yet I heaved a big stone against the trunks like a robber,—not too good to commit murder. I trust that I shall never do it again.

These gifts should be accepted, not merely with gentleness, but with a certain humble gratitude. The tree whose fruit we would obtain should not be too rudely shaken even. It is not a time of distress, when a little haste and violence even might be pardoned. It is worse than boorish, it is criminal to inflict an unnecessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. 

Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others. The thought that I was robbing myself by injuring the tree did not occur to me, but I was affected as if I had cast a rock at a sentient being, — with a duller sense than my own, it is true, but yet a distant relation. 

Behold a man cutting down a tree to come at the fruit! What is the moral of such an act? 

Faded white ferns now at Saw Mill Brook. They press yellow or straw-color.

Ah! we begin old men in crime. Would that we might grow innocent at last as the children of light! 

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t.

Is that tall weed in Mrs. Brooks’s yard Cacalia suaveolens?? Yet stem more angled than grooved; four or five feet high. Some time ago. 

Cousin Charles writes that his horse drew 5286 pounds up the hill from Hale’s factory, at Cattle-Show in Haverhill the other day.

H. D. Thorerau, Journal,  October 23, 1855

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. See  October 11, 1852 ("The jays scream, and the red squirrels scold, while you are clubbing and shaking the trees."); October 22, 1857 ("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.");   October 24, 1857 ("I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts.")

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t. See October 23, 1853 ("I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note."); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

It is the season of fuzzy seeds.

October 23. 

Sunday. P. M. — Down railroad to chestnut wood on Pine Hill. 

October 23, 2022

A pleasant day, but breezy. 

I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note.

 I notice these flowers still along the railroad causeway: 

• fresh sprouts from the root of the Solidago nemoralis in bloom,
• one or two fall dandelions,
• red clover and white,
• yarrow, 
• Trifolium arvense (perhaps not fresh),
• one small blue snapdragon,
• fresh tansy in bloom on the sunny sand bank. 

There are green leaves on the ends of elder twigs; blackberry vines still red; apple trees yellow and brown and partly bare; white ash bare (nearly); golden willows yellow and brown; white birches, exposed, are nearly bare; some pines still parti-colored. 

White, black, and red oaks still hold most of their leaves. What a peculiar red has the white! And some black have now a rich brown. 

The Populus grandidentata near railroad, bare; the P. tremuloides, half bare.

The hickories are finely crisped, yellow, more or less browned. 

Several yellow butterflies in the meadow. 

And many birds flit before me along the railroad, with faint notes, too large for linarias. Can they be tree sparrows ? Some weeks. [Probably the white-in-tail [i. e. vesper sparrow, or grass finch].] 

Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds. 

Everywhere in the fields I see the white, hoary (ashy-colored) sceptres of the gray goldenrod. Others are slightly yellowish still. The yellow is gone out of them, as the last flake of sunshine disappears from a field when the clouds are gathering. But though their golden hue is gone, their reign is not over. Compact puffed masses of seeds ready to take wing. They will send out their ventures from hour to hour the winter through. 

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. 

I go through Brooks's Hollow. 

The hazels bare, only here and there a few sere, curled leaves on them. 

The red cherry is bare. 

The blue flag seed-vessels at Walden are bursting, — six closely packed brown rows. 

I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and  I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. They are as thick on my clothes as the teeth of a comb. 

The prinos is bare, leaving red berries. 

The pond has gone down suddenly and surprisingly since I was here last, and this pool is left, cut off at a higher level, stagnant and drying up. This is its first decided going down since its going up a year or two ago. 

The red-looking water purslane is left bare, and the water-target leaves are turned brown and drying up on the bare mud. 

The clethra partly bare, crisped, yellowish and brown, with its fruit with persistent styles (?) in long racemes. 

Here are dense fields of light-colored rattlesnake grass drooping with the weight of their seeds. 

The high blueberries about the pond have still a few leaves left on, turned bright scarlet red. These it is adorn the shore so, seen at a distance, small but very bright. 

The panicled andromeda is thinly clad with yellow and brown leaves, not sere. 

Alders are green. 

Smooth sumach bare. 

Chestnuts commonly bare. 

I now notice the round red buds of the high blueberry. 

The blue-stemmed, and also the white, solidago on Walden bank. 

Small sassafras trees bare. 

The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia, — and methinks it is the latest of our asters and is besides the most common or conspicuous flower now. It is in large, dense masses, two or three feet high, pale purple or whitish, and covered with humble- bees. The radical leaves, now hearted and crenatish, are lake beneath. 

Also a hieracium quite freshly bloomed, but with white, bristly leaves and smooth stem, about twenty-flowered; peduncles and involucres glandular-hairy. Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved? Almost as slender as the panicled. (In press.) 

No gerardias. 

Strawberries are red and green. 

It is the season of fuzzy seeds, — goldenrods, everlasting, senecio, asters, epilobium, etc., etc. 

Viburnum Lentago, with ripe berries and dull-glossy red leaves; young black cherry, fresh green or yellow; mayweed. 

The chestnuts have mostly fallen. 

One Diplopappus linariifolius in bloom, its leaves all yellow or red. 

This and A. undulatus the asters seen to-day. 

The red oak now red, perhaps inclining to scarlet; the white, with that peculiar ingrained redness; the shrub oak, a clear thick leather-color; some dry black oak, darker brown; chestnut, light brown; hickory, yellow, turning brown. These the colors of some leaves I brought home.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 23, 1853

I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note.  See October 23, 1855 ("A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t. "); December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

The Viola pedata looking up from so low in the wood-path makes a singular impression. See October 22, 1859 (" In the wood-path below the Cliffs I see perfectly fresh and fair Viola pedata flowers, as in the spring, though but few together. No flower by its second blooming more perfectly brings back the spring to us") See also Basho:

coming along a mountain path

somehow so charming –

a wild violet

The Populus grandidentata near railroad, bare; the P. tremuloides, half bare. See October 21, 1858 ("The Populus grandidentata is quite yellow and leafy yet. "); October 25, 1858 ("Aspens (tremuliformis) generally bare. ")

Is it Gronovii or veiny-leaved? See note to July 17, 1853 ("I think we have no Hieracium Gronoviis")

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