A Book of the Seasons, Yarrow and Tansy in Autumn

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures

 completes the world.

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

I might put by themselves the November flowers, —

flowers which survive severe frosts and the fall of the leaf.

November 2, 1853

Yarrow and tansy still.

These are cold,

gray days.  

November 18, 1852

Rounded white petals 

of yarrow above the snow –

perfect, cold and chaste.

November 18, 1855

October 20 .  Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. October 20, 1852 

October 23. 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. 

October 23, 1853

November 3. To-day I see yarrow, very bright.  November 3, 1853

November 3.  Also Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom; yarrow, etc., etc. November 3, 1858

November 6. Still the Canada snapdragon, yarrow, autumnal dandelion, tansy, shepherd's-purse, silvery cinquefoil, witch-hazel. November 6, 1853

November 9.  Ranunculus repens, Bidens connata (flat in a brook), yarrow, dandelion, autumnal dandelion, tansy, Aster undulatus, etc. November 9, 1852

November 12. Tansy is very fresh still in some places. November 12, 1853

November 14. Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy. November 14, 1852

November 18. Yarrow and tansy still. These are cold, gray days.  November 18, 1852

November 18. 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. Its very color gives it a right to bloom above the snow, —as level as a snow-crust on the top white ruff.  November 18, 1855

November 19.  Autumnal dandelion quite fresh. Tansy very fresh yesterday. November 19, 1853

November 22. Yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent. November 22, 1853

November 23. 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. November 23, 1852

December 6. Tansy still fresh, and I saw autumnal dandelion a few days since. December 6, 1852

December 12. Tansy still fresh yellow by the Corner Bridge.  December 12, 1852

December 19. Yarrow too is full of seed now. December 19, 1859

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yarrow and Tansy in Autumn

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 © 2009-2025

The year is stretching itself, is waking up.

April 25.


1.30 P. M. — Up railroad, returning through Acton via powder-mills and Second Division.

The frogs peep at midday.

The bees are on the pistillate flowers of the early willows, – the honey-bee, a smaller, fly-like bee with very transparent wings and bright-yellow marks on the abdomen, and also a still smaller bee, more like the honey-bee. They all hum like summer.

The water in the meadow beyond J. Hosmer's is still and transparent, and I hear the more stertorous sound or croak of frogs from it, such as you associate with sunny, warmer, calm, placid spring weather.

The tortoises are out sunning. The painted tortoise on a tussock. A spotted tortoise on the rail road hisses when I touch it with my foot and draws its [head] in.

What is that bird on the willows, size of a vireo, yellow below, with darker lines, chestnut crown, whitish (?) line over eye, two white feathers in tail, yellow - olive back, darker tail?

Yarrow is started.

Saw the first kingfisher, and heard his most unmusical note.

That warmer, placid pool and stertorous sound of frogs must not be forgotten, - beneath the railroad causeway.

The bees hum on the early willows that grow in the sand.

They appear to have nearly stripped the sterile flowers of their pollen, and each has its little yellow parcel.

The year is stretching itself, is waking up.
. . .

What different tints of blue in the same sky! It requires to be parted by white clouds that the delicacy and depth of each part may appear.  Beyond a narrow wisp or feather of mist, how different the sky! Sometimes it is full of light, especially toward the horizon.

The sky is never seen to be of so deep and delicate a blue as when it is seen between downy clouds.


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

The year is stretching itself, is waking up. See April 25, 1854 ("I hear the woods filled with the hum of insects, as if my hearing were affected; and thus the summer's quire begins. The silent spaces have begun to be filled with notes of birds and insects and the peep and croak and snore of frogs, even as living green blades are everywhere pushing up amid the sere ones.")

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.")

A book which should be a memorial of October.

November 22

Geese went over yesterday, and to-day also.

The drizzling rain of yesterday has not checked the fall of the river. It was raised by the rain of Sunday, the 13th, and began to fall the 20th.

P. M. — Up river by boat.

I think it must be the white lily root I find gnawed by the rats, though the leaves are pellucid. It has large roots with eyes and many smaller rootlets attached, white tinged with a bluish slate-color. The radical leaves appear to have started again.

Turnip freshly in bloom in cultivated fields; knawel still; yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent; but I find no blossom on the Arenaria serpyllifolia.

If there is any one with whom we have a quarrel, it is most likely that that one makes some just demand on us which we disappoint.

I see still, here and there, a few deep-sunk yellow and decayed pads, the bleared, dulled, drowned eyes of summer.

I was just thinking it would be fine to get a specimen leaf from each changing tree and shrub and plant in autumn, in September and October, when it had got its brightest characteristic color, the intermediate ripeness in its transition from the green to the russet or brown state, outline and copy its color exactly with paint in a book, a book which should be a memorial of October, be entitled October Hues or Autumnal Tints.

I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata and the tint of the scarlet maple.

What a memento such a book would be, beginning with the earliest reddening of the leaves, woodbine and ivy, etc., etc., and the lake of radical leaves, down to the latest oaks! I might get the impression of their veins and outlines in the summer with lampblack, and after color them.

As I was returning down the river toward night, I mistook the creaking of a plow-wheel for a flock of blackbirds passing overhead, but it is too late for them.

The farmers plow considerably this month. No doubt it destroys many grubs in the earth.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1853

Geese went over yesterday, and to-day. See 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

Yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent. See 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.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yarrow and Tansy in Autumn

I remember especially the beautiful yellow of the Populus grandidentata. See October 25, 1858 ("The leaves of the Populus grandidentata, though half fallen and turned a pure and handsome yellow, are still wagging as fast as ever. These do not lose their color and wither on the tree . . .but they are fresh and unwilted, full of sap and fair as ever when they are first strewn on the ground. I do not think of any tree whose leaves are so fresh and fair when they fall.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata)

November flowers

November 14. 

Still yarrow, tall buttercup, and tansy.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1852

See October 20, 1852 ("Canada snapdragon, tansy, white goldenrod, blue-stemmed goldenrod. Aster undulatus, autumnal dandelion, tall buttercup, yarrow, mayweed. "); November 3, 1853 ("To-day I see yarrow, very bright "); November 9, 1852 ("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."); November 12, 1853 ("Tansy is very fresh still in some places"); 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) . . . and perhaps tall buttercup, etc."); 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")

The age of poetry.

December 19. 

December 19, 2019

Yarrow too is full of seed now, and the common johnswort has some seed in it still.

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs, — mink, musquash, and fox. Says that Stow is as good a town for mink as any, but none of them have more musquash than Concord. He, however, saw but one mink-track in all his rides, and thinks that they are scarce this year.

When a man is young and his constitution and body have not acquired firmness, i. e., before he has arrived at middle age, he is not an assured inhabitant of the earth, and his compensation is that he is not quite earthy, there is something peculiarly tender and divine about him. His sentiments and his weakness, nay, his very sickness and the greater uncertainty of his fate, seem to ally him to a noble race of beings, to whom he in part belongs, or with whom he is in communication. 

The young man is a demigod; the grown man, alas! is commonly a mere mortal. He is but half here, he knows not the men of this world, the powers that be. They know him not. 

Prompted by the reminiscence of that other sphere from which he so lately arrived, his actions are unintelligible to his seniors. He bathes in light. He is interesting as a stranger from another sphere. 

He really thinks and talks about a larger sphere of existence than this world. It takes him forty years to accommodate himself to the carapax of this world. This is the age of poetry. 

Afterward he may be the president of a bank, and go the way of all flesh. But a man of settled views, whose thoughts are few and hardened like his bones, is truly mortal, and his only resource is to say his prayers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 19, 1859

Farmer has lately been riding about in the neighboring towns west and northwest, as far as Townsend, buying up their furs. See March 15, 1855 ("He [Farmer] sells about a hundred mink skins in a year. . . .He says (I think) a mink’s skin is worth two dollars!”); November 27, 1855 ("I hear that he gives $1.75, and sells them again at a profit")

 Yarrow too is full of seed now. See 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."

There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

. .. I think that some summer squashes had turned yellow in our yard a fortnight or more ago . There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe . If you have had your eye on the patch much from the first , and so know which formed first , you may presume that these will ripen soonest ; or else you may incline to those which lie nearest the centre of the hill or root , as the oldest . Next the dull dead color and want of bloom are as good signs as any . Some look green and livid and have a very fog or mildew of bloom on them , like a fungus . These are as green as a leek through and through , and you'll find yourself in a pickle if you open one . Others have a dead dark green- ness , the circulations being less rapid in their cuticles and their blooming period passed , and these you may safely bet on . If the vine is quite green and lively , the death of the quirl at the root of the stem is almost a sure sign . For fear we should not discover it before , this is placed for a sign that there is redness and ripeness ( if not mealiness ) within . Of two otherwise similar , take that which yields the lowest tone when struck with your knuckles , i . e . , which is hollowest . The old or ripe ones sing base ; the young , tenor or falsetto . Some use the violent method of pressing to hear if they crack within , but this is not to be allowed . Above all no tapping on the vine is to be tolerated , suggestive of a greediness which defeats its own purpose . It is very childish . One man told me that he could n't raise melons because his children would cut them all up . I thought that he convicted himself out of his own mouth , and was not fit to be the ruler of a country according to Confucius ' . . .

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

The children have done 

bringing huckleberries to sell 

for nearly a week.

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open.

November 3

November 3, 2014

Colder weather, true November weather, comes again to-night, and I must rekindle my fire, which I had done without of late. I must walk briskly in order to keep warm in my thin coat. 

P. M. — To Annursnack.

I am inclined to think that pignuts fall earlier than mocker-nuts, i. e. the leaves, and that the first are now about fallen (?). Those on Nawshawtuct are bare, but I see a great many hickories of some kind not nearly bare. 

Monroe’s arbor-vitae hedge has fallen. Put it with the white pine. 

The jay is the bird of October. I have seen it repeatedly flitting amid the bright leaves, of a different color from them all and equally bright, and taking its flight from grove to grove. It, too, with its bright color, stands for some ripeness in the bird harvest. And its scream! it is as if it blowed on the edge of an October leaf. It is never more in its element and at home than when flitting amid these brilliant colors. No doubt it delights in bright color, and so has begged for itself a brilliant coat. It is not gathering seeds from the sod, too busy to look around, while fleeing the country. It is wide awake to what is going on, on the qui vive. It flies to some bright tree and bruits its splendors abroad. 

By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves, though some mean by it the changing or the acquisition of a brighter color. This I call the autumnal tint, the ripening to the fall. 

The only white birch leaves now seen are those lingering green terminal leaves of the 23d, now at last turned yellow, for they are now burnt upward to the last spark and glimmering. Methinks the birch ripens its leaves very perfectly though gradually. 

I should say that that tree which ripened its leaves well, like this, was better suited to the climate than one like the locust and most apples, —which was mostly killed by frost first annually. Perhaps this tells at last on the constitution of the tree, and that variety would be safest to cultivate which matured its leaves best. 

The pitch pine fallen and falling leaves now and for some time have not been bright or yellow, but brown. 

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. 

I notice that the cows lately admitted to the meadows and orchards have browsed the grass, etc., closely, on that strip between the dry hillside and the wet meadow, where it is undoubtedly sweetest and freshest yet, and where it chances that this late flower the gentian grows. There, too, grows the herbage which is now the most grateful to the cattle. 

Also Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom; yarrow, etc., etc. Much Lycopodium complanatum not open yet. 

Returning, I see at the very northwest end of the White Cedar Swamp a little elder, still quite leafy and green, near the path on the edge of the swamp. Its leafets are commonly nine, and the lower two or more are commonly divided. This seemed peculiarly downy beneath, even “sub-pubescent,” as Bigelow describes the Sambucus pubens to be. Compare it with the common. 

Also by it is Viburnum nudum, still quite fresh and green, the slender shoots from starting plants very erect and straight. 

The lower leaves of the water andromeda are now red, and the lambkill leaves are drooping (is it more than before?) and purplish from the effect of frost in low swamps like this. 

Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. They then sounded peculiarly distinct, being but few here and there on a dry and warm hill, bird-like. Yet these seemed to be singing a little louder and in a little loftier strain, now that the chirp of the cricket generally was quenched. 

November 3, 2024

How long we will follow an illusion! On meeting that one whom I call my friend, I find that I had imagined something that was not there. I am sure to depart sadder than I came. Nothing makes me so dejected as to have met my friends, for they make me doubt if it is possible to have any friends. I feel what a fool I am. I cannot conceive of persons more strange to me than they actually are; not thinking, not believing, not doing as I do; interrupted by me. My only distinction must be that I am the greatest bore they ever had. Not me single thought agreed; regularly balking one another. But when I get far away, my thoughts return to them. That is the way I can visit them. Perhaps it is unaccountable to me why I care for them. Thus I am taught that my friend is not an actual person. When I have withdrawn and am alone, I forget the actual person and remember only my ideal. Then I have a friend again. 

I am not so ready to perceive the illusion that is in Nature. I certainly come nearer, to say the least, to an actual and joyful intercourse with her. Every day I have more or less communion with her, as I think. At least, I do not feel as if I must withdraw out of nature. I feel like a welcome guest. Yet, strictly speaking, the same must be true of nature and of man; our ideal is the only real. It is not the finite and temporal that satisfies or concerns us in either case.

I associate the idea of friendship, methinks, with the person the most foreign to me. This illusion is perpetuated, like superstition in a country long after civilization has been attained to. We are attracted toward a particular person, but no one has discovered the laws of this attraction. When I come nearest to that other actually, I am wont to be surprised at my selection. It may be enough that we have met some time, and now can never forget it. Some time or other we paid each other  this wonderful compliment, looked largely, humanly, divinely on one another, and now are fated to be acquaintances forever. 

In the case of nature I am not so conscious of this unsatisfied yearning.

Some oak woods begin to look bare, and even smoky, after their fashion. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 3, 1858


By fall I mean literally the falling of the leaves. See November 11, 1851 (The fall of the year is over.")

Though I listen for them, I do not hear a cricket this afternoon. I think that I heard a few in the afternoon of November 1st. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); Seee also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

At base of Annursnack I find one or two fringed gentians yet open, but even the stems are generally killed. See October 10, 1858 ("To Annursnack  . . . I find the fringed gentian abundantly open at 3 and at 4 P. M., — in fact, it must be all the afternoon, — open to catch the cool October sun and air in its low position. Such a dark blue! surpassing that of the male bluebird’s back, who must be encouraged by its presence."); October 12, 1857 ("To Annursnack . . . The fringed gentian by the brook opposite is in its prime.");  November 4, 1853 (“To Hubbard's Close. I find no traces of the fringed gentian here, so that in low meadows I suspect it does not last very late”); November 30, 1856 (“Minot Pratt tells me that he watched the fringed gentian this year, and it lasted till the first week in November..”) See allso A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

Alone, I forget 

the real person – remember 

only my ideal.

On a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett.

October 19. 

P. M. — To Conantum. 

The fall, now and for some weeks, is the time for flocks of sparrows of various kinds flitting from bush to bush and tree to tree — and both bushes and trees are thinly leaved or bare — and from one seared meadow to another. They are mingled together, and their notes, even, being faint, are, as well as their colors and motions, much alike. The sparrow youth are on the wing. They are still further concealed by their resemblance in color to the gray twigs and stems, which are now beginning to be bare. I have not noticed any kind of blackbird for a long time. 

The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos which I have noticed since the 8th is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now, hardly survives at all. 

Of the asters which I have noticed since that date, the A. undulatus is, perhaps, the only one of which you can find a respectable specimen. I see one so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. 

Of lingering flowers which I have noticed during the last three or four days (vide list under 16th), not including fringed gentian and witch-hazel, the freshest, and at same time commonest, is the yarrow. 

I noticed, two or three days ago, after one of those frosty mornings, half an hour before sunset of a clear and pleasant day, a swarm, — were they not of winter gnats ? — between me and the sun like so many motes, seven or eight feet from the ground, by the side of a young cherry tree in the yard. The swarm was some three feet in diameter and seemed to have been revealed by the level rays of the sun. Each insect was acting its part in a ceaseless dance, rising and falling a few inches while the swarm kept its place. Is not this a forerunner of winter?

I go across Hubbard's land and find that I must go round the corners of two or three new winter-rye fields, which show very green by contrast with the seared grass. 

I sit on the old Conantum door-step, where the wind rattles the loose clapboards above my head, though for the most part only the horizontal rows of wrought nails are left to show where the clap boards have been. It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin, as if the first step would have been to pull down the house. 

See quite a flock of myrtle-birds, — which I might carelessly have mistaken for slate-colored snowbirds, — flitting about on the rocky hillside under Conantum Cliff. They show about three white or light-colored spots when they fly, commonly no bright yellow, though some are pretty bright. They perch on the side of the dead mulleins, on rocks, on the ground, and directly dart off apparently in pursuit of some insect. I hear no note from them. They are thus near or on the ground, then, not as in spring. 

Both the white and black ash are quite bare, and some of the elms there. The bass has lost, apparently, more than half its leaves. 

The Botrychium lunarioides, now shedding its pale whitish dust when struck by the foot, but apparently generally a little past its maturity, is quite common in the pasture near the wall where I sat to watch the eagle. At first you notice only the stipe, four to seven or eight inches high, like a narrow hand partly closed, for the small (now dull-purplish) frond unites with it below the surface. 

Walking through the reddened huckleberry bushes, whose leaves are fast falling, I notice the birds' nests already filling with withered leaves. 

Witch-hazel in bloom
October 19, 2018

Witch-hazel is in prime, or probably a little past, though some buds are not yet open. Their leaves are all gone. They form large clumps on the hillside there, even thirty to fifty stems from one to two or three inches in diameter and the highest twelve feet high, falling over on every side. The now imbrowned ferns around indicate the moist soil which they like. 

I have often noticed the inquisitiveness of birds, as the other day of a sparrow, whose motions I should not have supposed to have any reference to me, if I had not watched it from first to last. 

I stood on the edge of a pine and birch wood. It flitted from seven or eight rods distant to a pine within a rod of me, where it hopped about stealthily and chirped awhile, then flew as many rods the other side and hopped about there a spell, then back to the pine again, as near me as it dared, and again to its first position, very restless all the while. Generally I should have supposed that there was more than one bird, or that it was altogether accidental, — that the chipping of this sparrow eight or ten rods [away] had no reference to me, — for I could see nothing peculiar about it. 

But when I brought my glass to bear on it, I found that it was almost steadily eying me and was all alive with excitement.

Pokeweed has been killed by the severe frosts of the last three or four days. 

The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting. They point at various I angles with the stem like a flourish. The pretty brown fishes have loosened and lifted their scales somewhat, are bristling a little. Or, further advanced, the outer part of the down of the upper seeds is blown loose, while they are still retained by the ends  of the middle portion in loops  attached to the core. These white tufts, ready to burst and take to flight on the least jar, show afar as big as your fist. There they dangle and flutter, till they are quite dry and the wind rises. Others again are open and empty, except of the brown core, and you see what a delicate smooth white (slightly cream-colored) lining this casket has. 

The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost. 

A large pasture thistle bud close to the ground amid its leaves, as in spring. 

Among the dirty woolly heads of plants now gone to seed, I notice for the first time the peculiar matted, woolly top of the tall anemone, rising above some red-leaved huckleberries. I am surprised to see to what length and breadth one of these little compact conical heads has puffed out. Here are five which have flown and matted together into a mass four or five inches long, perpendicularly, by two wide, full of seeds with their wool. 

I return by the west side of Lee's Cliff hill, and sit on a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles, amid the woods, whence I see Wachusett. 

Wachusett from Fair Haven Hill, August 2, 1852

How little unevenness and elevation is required for Nature's effects! An elevation one thousand or fifteen hundred feet above the plain is seen from all eminences and level open plains, as from over the opening made by a pond, within thirty miles. Nature is not obliged to lift her mountains very high in the horizon, after all, to make them visible and interesting. 

The rich sunny yellow of the old pitch pine needles, just ready to fall, contrasting with the new and unmixed masses above, makes a very pleasing impression, as I look down into the hollows this side of Lee's Cliff. 

I noticed the small woodpecker several days ago.

H. D. Thoreau , Journal, October 19, 1856

The most prominent of the few lingering solidagos . . .  is the S. caesia, though that is very scarce indeed now. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

I see one [A. undulatus] so fresh that there is a bumblebee on it. See October 2, 1859  ("The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc."): October 4, 1853 ("Bumblebees are on the Aster undulatus, and gnats are dancing in the air."); October 6, 1858 (“The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path."); October 12, 1856 ("It is interesting to see how some of the few flowers which still linger are frequented by bees and other insects."); October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides."); November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom"); November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet." See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bees

It is affecting to behold a peach and apple orchard just come to maturity by the side of this house, which was planted since this house was an uninhabited ruin.  See February 19, 1855 ("Conant was cutting up an old pear tree which had blown down by his old house on Conantum. This and others still standing. . . were set anciently with reference to a house which stood in the little peach orchard near by.”) See also May 20, 1857 ("Peach trees are revealed along fences where they were quite unobserved before.")

Witch-hazel is in prime . . . Their leaves are all gone. See October 19, 1859 ("Many witch-hazel nuts are not yet open. The bushes just bare"); See also October 9, 1851("The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. Some bushes are completely bare of leaves, and leather-colored they strew the ground."); October 11, 1858 ("Witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! ");  October 20, 1852 ("The witch-hazel is bare of all but flowers") And also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

Whence I see Wachusett . . . from all eminences and level open plains. See October 19, 1854 ("To Westminster by cars; thence on foot to Wachusett Mountain, four miles to Foster’s, and two miles thence to mountain-top by road."); October 20, 1854 ("Soon after sunrise I saw the pyramidal shadow of the mountain reaching quite across the State") See also November 30, 1852 ("From Pine Hill, Wachusett is seen over Walden. The country seems to slope up from the west end of Walden to the mountain."); August 25, 1853 ("Looking up the valley of the Mill Brook . . . I was surprised to see the whole outline and greater part of the base of Wachusett, though you stand in a low meadow."); December 27, 1853 ("Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down"); And also September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day."); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Mountains in the Horizon

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

On a rounded rock

covered with fresh pine-needles

I see Wachusett.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, On a rounded rock there, covered with fresh-fallen pine-needles

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-561019