Sunday, October 10, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: October 10 (these are the finest days in the year, renewed spring, fall flowers, freshly fallen leaves, migrating birds)




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 




The chickadee now 
reminds me of the winter –
sounding all alone.
October 10, 1851

Some maples which a week ago
were a mass of yellow foliage
are now a fine gray smoke, as it were,
and their leaves cover the ground.
October 10, 1851

You make a great noise
walking in the woods now that 
leaves cover the ground.

How agreeable 
to the eye at this season 
the new-fallen leaves.
October 10, 1851

Flocks of small sparrows
washing and pruning themselves 
after a long flight. 
October 10, 1853 

The most brilliant days
in the year ushered in by
these frosty mornings.

So bright and serene
and such a sheen from the earth –
so ripe the season.

These glorious days
which I am tempted to call
 finest in the year. 

The humblest fungus
a life akin to my own –
poem in its kind.
October 10, 1858

White-throated sparrows 
together with myrtle-birds 
close up to the house.




October 10, 2015

These are the finest days in the year, Indian summer.  October 10, 1856

This afternoon it is 80°, between three and four, and at 6.30 this evening my chamber is oppressively sultry, and the thermometer on the north side of the house is at 64°. I lie with window wide open under a single sheet most of the night. October 10, 1856

This morning it is very pleasant and warm. October 10, 1853

So bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm (except, perhaps, this day, which is cooler), too warm for a thick coat, — yet not sultry nor oppressive, – so ripe the season and our thoughts. October 10, 1857

Certainly these are the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this. October 10, 1857

These days you may say the year is ripened like a fruit by frost, and puts on brilliant tints of maturity but not yet of decay. October 10, 1857

See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks of cornstalks and the standing corn. October 10, 1857

Such is the season. The morning frosts have left a silvery hue on the fine pasture grasses. They have faded to a kindred color. October 10, 1857

The air this morning is full of bluebirds, and again it is spring. October 10, 1851

The faint suppressed warbling of the robins sounds like a reminiscence of the spring. October 10, 1853

There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season. October 10, 1851

Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers. October 10, 1856

The blossoming of spring flowers, — not to mention the witch-hazel, — the notes of spring birds, the springing of grain and grass and other plants. October 10, 1851

The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards.   October 10, 1856

As I stood amid the witch-hazels near Flint's Pond, a flock of a dozen chickadees came flitting and singing about me with great ado, — a most cheering and enlivening sound, — with incessant day-day-day and a fine wiry strain between whiles, flitting ever nearer and nearer and nearer, inquisitively, till the boldest was within five feet of me; then suddenly, their curiosity satiated, they flit by degrees further away and disappear, and I hear with regret their retreating day-day-days. October 10, 1851

The chickadee, sounding all alone, now that birds are getting scarce, reminds me of the winter, in which it almost alone is heard. October 10, 1851

White-throated sparrows in yard and close up to house, together with myrtle-birds (which fly up against side of house and alight on window-sills) and, I think, tree sparrows? October 10, 1859. 

Apparently Fringilla pusilla yet. October 10, 1858  

There are many small birds in flocks on the elms in Cheney's field, faintly warbling, — robins and purple finches and especially large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning themselves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight and the wind of yesterday. October 10, 1853

Generally speaking, the autumnal tints affect the color of the landscape for only two or three miles, but I distinguish maples by their color half a mile north of Brooks Clark’s, or some three miles distant, from this hill, — one further east very bright. Also I see them in the northeast, or on or near, apparently, a road between Bedford and Billerica, at least four or five miles distant!! This is the furthest I can see them. October 10, 1857

The smokes from a dozen clearings far and wide, from a portion of the earth thirty miles or more in diameter, reveal the employment of many husbandmen at this season. October 10, 1857

As I go along the Groton road, I see afar, in the middle of E. Wood’s field, what looks like a stone jug or post, but my glass reveals it a woodchuck, a great, plump gray fellow, and when I am nearly half a mile off, I can still see him nibbling the grass there, and from time to time, when he hears, perchance, a wagon on the road, sitting erect and looking warily around for approaching foes. October 10, 1858

I am glad to see the woodchuck so fat in the orchard. It proves that is the same nature that was of yore. October 10, 1858

I find the undersides of the election-cake fungi there covered with pink-colored fleas, apparently poduras, skipping about when it is turned up to the light. October 10, 1858

The simplest and most lumpish fungus has a peculiar interest to us, compared with a mere mass of earth, be— cause it is so obviously organic and related to ourselves, however mute. It is the expression of an idea; growth according to a law; matter not dormant, not raw, but inspired, appropriated by spirit. October 10, 1858

The humblest fungus betrays a life akin to my own. It is a successful poem in its kind. October 10, 1858

There is suggested something superior to any particle of matter, in the idea or mind which uses and arranges the particles. October 10, 1858

Genius is inspired by its own works; it is hermaphroditic. October 10, 1858

While moving the fence to-day, dug up a large reddish, mummy-like chrysalid or nymph of the sphinx moth. October 10, 1856

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 10, 1858

Burdock, Ranunculus acris, rough hawk-weed. October 10, 1852

The indigo-weed, now partly turned black and broken off, blows about the pastures like the flyaway grass. October 10, 1858

I find some of those little rooty tubers , now woody, in the turtle field of A. Hosmer’s by Eddy Bridge. October 10, 1858

Pulling up some Diplopappus linariifolius, now done, I find many bright-purple shoots, a half to three quarters of an inch long, freshly put forth underground and ready to turn upward and form new plants in the spring. October 10, 1858

You have only to dig a pond anywhere in the fields hereabouts, and you will soon have not only water-fowl, reptiles, and fishes in it, but also the usual water-plants, as lilies, etc. You will no sooner have got your pond dug than nature will begin to stock it. October 10, 1860

Colder weather, and the cat's fur grows. October 10, 1859

A drizzling rain to-day. October 10, 1852

Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again. October 10, 1853

The streets are strewn with elm leaves. October 10, 1852

The butternut is perhaps the first on the street to lose its leaves. October 10, 1852

Some maples which a week ago were a mass of yellow foliage are now a fine gray smoke, as it were, and their leaves cover the ground. October 10, 1851

The autumnal brightness of the foliage generally is less, or faded, since the fading of the maples and hickories, which began about the 5th. October 10, 1858

Generally speaking, chestnuts, hickories, aspens, and some other trees attain a fair clear yellow only in small specimens in the woods or sprout-lands, or in their lower leaves. October 10, 1857  

Oak leaves generally (perhaps except scarlet?) begin to wither soon after they begin to turn, and large trees (except the scarlet) do not generally attain to brilliancy. October 10, 1858

You see now in sprout-lands young scarlet oaks of every degree of brightness from green to dark scarlet. October 10, 1857

It is a beautifully formed leaf, with its broad, free, open sinuses, - worthy to be copied in sculpture. A very agreeable form, a bold, deep scallop, as if the material were cheap. Like tracery. The color is more mingled with light than in the less deeply scalloped oak leaves. It is a less simple form. October 10, 1857

It is not sere and withered as in November. October 10, 1857

The Salix humilis leaves are falling fast in Wood Turtle Path. . .looking curled and slaty-colored about the half-bare stems. October 10, 1858

The air is full of falling leaves. October 10, 1852

Thus each humble shrub is contributing its mite to the fertility of the globe. October 10, 1858

The trees begin to look thin. October 10, 1852

Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall. October 10, 1852

How agreeable to the eye at this season the color of new-fallen leaves. October 10, 1851

When freshly fallen, with their forms and their veins still distinct, they have a certain life in them still. October 10, 1851

You make a great noise now walking in the woods, on account of the dry leaves, especially chestnut and oak and maple, that cover the ground. October 10, 1851

Now is the time to enjoy the dry leaves. October 10, 1851

Now all nature is a dried herb, full of medicinal odors. October 10, 1851

November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush, and the fall and blackening of the pontederia. October 10, 1858

The leaves of the two former are the greater part fallen, letting in the autumn light to the water, and the ducks have less shelter and concealment. October 10, 1858

Going to E. Hosmer's by boat, see quite a flock of wild ducks in front of his house, close by the bridge. October 10, 1856

A young man has just shown me a small duck which he shot in the river from my boat. October 10, 1855

Glow-worms in the evening. October 10, 1852

The elms in the village have lost many of their leaves, and their shadows by moonlight are not so heavy as last month. October 10, 1851

This is the end of the sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year. October 10, 1857


October 10, 2019

October 10, 2016

March 15, 1860 ("On the whole the finest day yet. . . . Here is the first fair, and at the same time calm and warm, day")
May 5, 1852 ("Every part of the world is beautiful today.");
May 18, 1852 (The world can never be more beautiful than now”)
May 21, 1854 (“the finest days of the year, days long enough and fair enough for the worthiest deeds.”)
June 15, 1851 ("I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows ( Ranunculus acris ) , with a smooth stem.")
June 19, 1856 ("Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms.)
July 22, 1851 ("These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog.") 
August 19, 1853 (“A glorious and ever-memorable day.”)
August 21, 1851 ("Ranunculus acris (tall crowfoot) still.")
September 1, 1856 ("The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground")
September 3, 1860 (" Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day . . .We see the smokes of burnings on various sides.")
September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”)
September 12, 1858 ("Thus gradually and successively each plant lends its richest color to the general effect, and in the fittest place, and passes away. ")
September 13, 1858 ("Fringed gentian out well, on easternmost edge of the Painted-Cup Meadows, by wall.");
September 14, 1856 ("Fringed gentian well out.")
September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”)
September 18, 1854 ("Fringed gentian near Peter’s out a short time, . . ., it may after all be earlier than the hazel.”);
September 18, 1856 ("The gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel.")
September 18, 1860 ("This is a beautiful day, warm but not too warm, a harvest day . . . the first unquestionable and conspicuous autumnal day.")
September 18, 1859 ("From the observation of this year I should say that the fringed gentian opened before the witch-hazel")
September 18, 1858 ("I think that I see a white-throated sparrow this afternoon.")
September 18, 1856 (" Smilacina berries of both kinds now commonly ripe")
September 18, 1860 ("If you are not happy to-day you will hardly be so to-morrow.")
September 20, 1851 ("This week we have had most glorious autumnal weather, - cool and cloudless, bright days, filled with the fragrance of ripe grapes, preceded by frosty mornings.")
September 25, 1854 ("I see several smokes in the distance, of burning brush. . . . I now smell strongly the smoke of this burning half a mile off, though it is scarcely perceptible in the air.")
September 26, 1859 ("So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring.")
September 28, 1853 ("The elm leaves are falling.")
September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon. No such gust since spring.")
September 28, 1853 ("The fringed gentian was out before Sunday.")
September 29, 1857 ("I hear that some have gathered fringed gentian.")
September 29, 1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds")
October 1, 1853 ("Robins and bluebirds collect and flit about.")
October 1, 1858 ("The fringed gentians are now in prime.")
October 1, 1858 ("The elms are now great brownish-yellow masses hanging over the street. . . .The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. ")
October 2, 1858 ("The cat comes in from an early walk amid the weeds. She is full of sparrows and wants no more breakfast this morning,")
October 2, 1857 ("The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you.")
October 3, 1858 ("Hear a hylodes peeping on shore.")
October 4, 1859 ('I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.”)
October 7, 1857 (" When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape")
October 8, 1855 ("See apparently white-throated sparrows hopping under covert of the button-bushes.”)
October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows . . .They are all together and keep up a faint warbling, apparently the white-throats and tree sparrows, — if the last are there”)
October 8, 1857 ("I see and hear white-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river's edge, uttering a faint sharp cheep.")
October 9, 1851 ("In the maple woods the ground is strewn with new fallen leaves.")
October 9, 1851 ("The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside, while its broad yellow leaves are falling. . . .I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. While its leaves fall, its blossoms spring. The autumn, then, is indeed a spring.")

The simplest fungus
a life akin to my own.
A poem in its kind.
October 10, 1858


October 11, 1858 ("See a white-throat sparrow.")
October 11, 1859 ("The note of the chickadee, heard now in cooler weather and above many fallen leaves, has a new significance.")
October 12, 1852 ("The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”)
October 13, 1852 ("Many maples have lost all their leaves and are shrunk all at once to handsome clean gray wisps on the edge of the meadows. Crowded together at a distance they look like smoke.”)
October 13, 1855 ("The maples now stand like smoke along the meadows")
October 13, 1858 ("The elms are at least half bare.")
October 13, 1852 ("Far amid the western hills there rises a pure white smoke. There is no disturbing sound.") 
October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools, the note of the chickadee sounds cheerfully winteryish.")
October 14, 1860 ("Consider how many leaves there are to fall each year and how much they must add to the soil. We have had a remarkably fertile year.")
October 14, 1855 (“One flies up against the house and alights on the window-sill within a foot of me inside. Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt”)
October 15, 1856 ("The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.")
October 16, 1856 ("I notice these flowers on the way by the roadside, which survive the frost, . . . mayweed, tall crowfoot, autumnal dandelion, yarrow”)
October 16, 1857 ("How beautifully they die, making cheerfully their annual contribution to the soil! They fall to rise again; as if they knew that it was not one annual deposit alone that made this rich mould in which pine trees grow. They live in the soil whose fertility and bulk they increase, and in the forests that spring from it. ")
October 19, 1852 ("It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare. It is one of the errands of the walker, as well as of the bees, for it yields him a more celestial nectar still. It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom.")
October 20, 1853 ("Merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting their graves, whispering all through the woods about it. They that waved so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! So they troop to their graves, light and frisky. They are about to add a leaf's breadth to the depth of the soil. We are all the richer for their decay.")
October 20, 1855 ("Eighteen and more bluebirds, perhaps preparing to migrate."). 
October 20, 1858 ("A white-throated sparrow.")
October 21, 1857 ("I see many myrtle-birds now about the house this forenoon, on the advent of cooler weather. They keep flying up against the house and the window and fluttering there, as if they would come in, or alight on the wood-pile or pump. They would commonly be mistaken for sparrows, but show more white when they fly, beside the yellow on the rump and sides of breast seen near to and two white bars on the wings.")
October 22, 1859 ("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 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind 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 24, 1855 ("The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind.")
October 24, 1858 ("This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. ")
October. 28, 1860 ("We make a great noise going through the fallen leaves in the woods and wood-paths now, so that we cannot hear other sounds")
October 29, 1855 ("When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves, returning to dust again. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs. The scent of their decay is pleasant to me.")
October 31, 1854 ("[W]e have had remarkably warm and pleasant Indian summer, with frequent frosts in the morning. Sat with open window for a week.")
November 1, 1855 ("It is a beautiful Indian-summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind.")
November 4, 1855 (“The winter is approaching. The birds are almost all gone. The note of the dee de de sounds now more distinct, prophetic of winter, as I go amid the wild apples on Nawshawtuct.”)
November 8, 1855 ("I can sit with my window open and no fire.”)
November 9, 1850 ("I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day (November 9th) in the woods.")
December 10, 1853 ("These are among the finest days in the year”)
December 21, 1854 (“We are tempted to call these the finest days of the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning.”) 

October 10, 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.

October 9  <<<<<<<<<  October 10 >>>>>>>>  October 11

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 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 © 2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDT10Oct


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A small duck.





October 10.



A young man has just shown me a small duck which he shot in the river from my boat.

I thought it a blue-winged teal, but it has no distinct beauty-spot.

The bill broad and, I should say from remembrance, bluish-black, as are the legs and feet, not red or yellow or flesh-color, webbed.  Above black and brown with no bright colors or distinct white; neck brown beneath and breast; secondaries pale-bluish, tipped with white; a little greenish perhaps on the scapulars.

Mr. William Allen, now here, tells me that when, some years ago, a stream near his house in East Bridgewater, emptying into the Taunton River, was drained, he found a plant on the bottom very similar to a sponge — of the same form and color — and say six inches wide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1855

I thought it a blue-winged teal. See March 18, 1855 ("Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal.");  October 8, 1857 ("Four dark-colored ducks (white beneath), maybe summer, or teal (??)"); November 11, 1858 ("Going by the willow-row above railroad, scare up a small duck, —perhaps teal,"); September 22, 1852 ("Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season."); September 20, 1856 ("Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now.")




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Saturday, October 9, 2021

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. (All the year is a spring.)





 October 9

October 9, 2023

Heard two screech owls in the night.

Boiled a quart of acorns for breakfast, but found them not so palatable as raw, having acquired a bitterish taste, per chance from being boiled with the shells and skins; yet one would soon get accustomed to this.

The sound of foxhounds in the woods, heard now, at 9 A. M., in the village, reminds me of mild winter mornings.

2 P. M. - To Conantum.

In the maple woods the ground is strewn with new fallen leaves.

I hear the green locust again on the alders of the causeway, but he is turned a straw-color. The warm weather has revived them.

All the acorns on the same tree are not equally sweet. They appear to dry sweet.

From Conantum I see them getting hay from the meadow below the Cliffs. It must have been quite dry when cut.

The black ash has lost its leaves, and the white here is dry and brownish yellow, not having turned mulberry.

I see half a dozen snakes in this walk, green and striped (one very young striped one), who appear to be out enjoying the sun. They appear to make the most of the last warm days of the year.

The hills and plain on the opposite side of the river are covered with deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks.

On Lee's hillside by the pond, the old leaves of some pitch pines are almost of a golden-yellow hue, seen in the sunlight, a rich autumnal look. The green are, as it were, set in the yellow.

***

October 9, 2023

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.

It is an extremely interesting plant, — October and November's child, and yet reminds me of the very earliest spring. Its blossoms smell like the spring, like the willow catkins; by their color as well as fragrance they belong to the saffron dawn of the year, suggesting amid all these signs of autumn, falling leaves and frost, that the life of Nature, by which she eternally flourishes, is untouched.

It stands here in the shadow on the side of the hill, while the sunlight from over the top of the hill lights up its topmost sprays and yellow blossoms. Its spray, so jointed and angular, is not to be mistaken for any other.

I lie on my back with joy under its boughs. 

While its leaves fall, its 
blossoms spring. The autumn, then, 
is indeed a spring.

All the year is a spring.

I see two blackbirds high overhead, going south, but I am going north in my thought with these hazel blossoms.  It is a faery place.

This is a part of the immortality of the soul.

When I was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects to extract honey from its flowers, – that perchance they yielded no honey, – I saw a bee upon it. How important, then, to the bees this late-blossoming plant!

October 9, 2023


***


The circling hawk steers himself through the air, like the skater, without a visible motion.

The hoary cinquefoil in blossom.

A large sassafras tree behind Lee's, two feet diameter at ground.

As I return over the bridge, I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring.

I see a large sucker rise to the surface of the river.

I hear the crickets singing loudly in the walls as they have not done (so loudly) for some weeks, while the sun is going down shorn of his rays by the haze.

There is a thick bed of leaves in the road under Hubbard's elms.

This reminds me of Cato, as if the ancients made more use of nature.
He says, “ Stramenta si deerunt, frondem iligneam legito, eam substernito ovibus bubusque.” (If litter is wanting, gather the leaves of the holm oak and strew them under your sheep and oxen.) In another place he says, “Circum vias ulmos serito, et partim populos, uti frondem ovibus et bubus habeas.” 

I suppose they were getting that dry meadow grass for litter. There is little or no use made by us of the leaves of trees, not even for beds, unless it be sometimes to rake them up in the woods and cast into hog-pens or compost-heaps.

Cut a stout purple cane of pokeweed.

H. D, Thoreau, Journal, October 9, 1851

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. See October 4, 1858 ("Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime."); October 11, 1858 ("Witch-hazel in full bloom, which has lost its leaves! "); October 13, 1859 ("I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom "); October 18, 1858 ("By the brook, witch-hazel, as an underwood, is in the height of its change, but elsewhere exposed large bushes are bare"); 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 was thinking that it bloomed too late for bees or other insects. See Bernd Heinrich, “Thermoregulation in Winter Moths.” Sci. Am 277: 73–83 (1987. ); Anderson & Hill (2002)("Given the morphology of H. virginiana flowers, the exposed glistening staminodes where a thin film of nectar is produced, the small exposed floral parts, the sugar ratio, and documented visits to some of the flowers open in late September or early October, small bees are also potential pollinators") and The Pollination Puzzle of American Witch Hazel (December 2020)

Heard two screech owls in the night. See September 9, 1859 ("Within a week I think I have heard screech owls at evening from over the river once or twice."); October 28, 1855 ("As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sitting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. . . . So I spring round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and catch it in my hand. "); November 24, 1858 ("I hear a screech owl in Wheeler’s wood by the railroad, and I heard one a few evenings ago at home") and note to September 23, 1855 ("I hear from my chamber a screech owl — a loud, piercing scream, much like the whinny of a colt.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Screech Owl

Deep warm red leaves of shrub oaks. See October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit."); November 25, 1858 ("Most shrub oaks there have lost their leaves (Quercus ilicifolia), which, very fair and perfect, cover the ground. "); November 29, 1857 ("Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner."); December 1. 1856 ("The dear wholesome color of shrub oak leaves, so clean and firm, not decaying, but which have put on a kind of immortality, not wrinkled and thin like the white oak leaves, but full-veined and plump, as nearer earth. Well-tanned leather on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of the cow and the deer, silver-downy beneath, turned toward the late bleached and russet fields . . .The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch.")


On Lee's hillside by the pond, the old leaves of some pitch pines are almost of a golden-yellow hue, seen in the sunlight, a rich autumnal look. The green are, as it were, set in the yellow. See October 19, 1856 ("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");  October 23, 1852 ("The white pines have shed their leaves, making a yellow carpet on the grass, but the pitch pines are yet parti-colored.")

The witch-hazel here is in full blossom on this magical hillside. See October 4, 1858 ("Witch-hazel apparently at height of change, yellow below, green above, the yellow leaves by their color concealing the flowers. The flowers, too, are apparently in prime. The leaves are often richly spotted reddish and greenish brown"); October 13, 1859 (" I perceive the peculiar scent of the witch-hazel in bloom for several rods around") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

 The hoary cinquefoil in blossom. See October 9, 1852 ("Touch-me-not, self-heal, Bidens cernua, ladies'-tresses, cerastium, dwarf tree-primrose, butter and-eggs (abundant), prenanthes, sium, silvery cinque-foil, mayweed.") See also June 23, 1851 ("P. argentea, hoary cinquefoil, also is now in blossom.")

A large sassafras tree behind Lee's, two feet diameter at ground. See October 5, 1857 ("Am surprised to see a large sassafras tree, with its rounded umbrella-like top, without limbs beneath, on the west edge of the Yellow Birch Swamp, or east of Boulder Field. It is some sixteen inches in diameter"); March 3, 1859 ("Channing tells me he has met with a sassafras tree in New Bedford woods, which, according to a string which he put round it, is eleven and three quarters feet in circumference at about three feet from the ground.") See also September 28, 1854 ("The sassafras trees on the hill are now wholly a bright orange scarlet as seen from my window, and the small ones elsewhere are also changed.") September 30, 1854 ("I detect the sassafras by its peculiar orange scarlet half a mile distant.")


I hear a song sparrow singing on the willows exactly as in spring. See October 8, 1856 ("A song sparrow utters a full strain"); October 26, 1855 ("The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

Cut a stout purple cane of pokeweed. See August 23, 1853 ("Poke stems are now ripe. . . .Their stems are a deep, rich purple with a bloom, contrasting with the clear green leaves. Its stalks, thus full of purple wine, are one of the fruits of autumn. . . .I could spend the evening of the year musing amid the poke stems"); August 26, 1856 ("I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed."); October 5, 1857 ("There is a great abundance of poke [on Eb Hubbard's hill]. That lowest down the hill, killed by frost, drooping and withered, no longer purple-stemmed, but faded; higher up it is still purple.")

The circling hawk steers himself through the air, like the skater, without a visible motion. See September 17, 1839 ("The wise man. . . each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step")

The witch-hazel here
is in full blossom on this
magical hillside.


A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024



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Friday, October 8, 2021

Milkweed seeds carry far



October 8

Wednesday.

A slight wind now fills the air with elm leaves.

The nights have been cool of late, so that a fire has been comfortable, but the last was quite warm.

October 8, 2020

2 P. M.-To the Marlborough road.

This day is very warm, yet not bright like the last, but hazy.

Picked up an Indian gouge on Dennis's Hill.

The foliage has lost its very bright tints now; it is more dull, looks dry, or as if burnt, even.

The very ground or grass is crisped with drought, and yields a crispy sound to my feet.

The woods are brownish, reddish, yellowish merely, excepting of course the evergreens.

It is so warm that I am obliged to take off my neck-handkerchief and laborers complain of the heat.

By the side of J. P. Brown's grain-field I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. To my taste they are quite as good as chestnuts. No wonder the first men lived on acorns. 

Such as these are no mean food, such as they are represented to be. Their sweetness is like the sweetness of bread, and to have discovered this palatableness in this neglected nut, the whole world is to me the sweeter for it. I am related again to the first men.

What can be handsomer, wear better to the eye, than the color of the acorn, like the leaves on which they fall polished, or varnished? To find that acorns are edible, -- it is a greater addition to one's stock of life than would be imagined. I should be at least equally pleased if I were to find that the grass tasted sweet and nutritious. It increases the number of my friends; it diminishes the number of my foes.

How easily at this season I could feed myself in the woods! There is mast for me too, as well as for the pigeon and the squirrel. This Dodonean fruit.


The goldfinches are in the air.

I hear a blackbird also, and see a downy woodpecker, and see and hear a hairy one.

The seeds of the pasture thistle are not so buoyed up by their down as the milkweed.

In the forenoon commonly I see nature only through a window; in the afternoon my study or apartment in which I sit is a vale.

The farmers are ditching,-redeeming more meadow, – getting corn, collecting their apples, threshing, etc.

I cannot but believe that acorns were intended to be the food of man.
They are agreeable to the palate, as the mother's milk to the babe. The sweet acorn tree is famous and well known to the boys. There can be no question respecting the wholesomeness of this diet.

This warm day is a godsend to the wasps. I see them buzzing about the broken windows of deserted buildings, as Jenny Dugan's, -- the yellow-knotted.

I smell the dry leaves like hay from the woods.

Some elms are already bare.

The basswood here is quite sere.

The pines are still shedding their leaves.

This brook by Jenny's is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. In the spring I saw the sucker here. It is remarkable through what narrow and shallow brooks a sucker will be seen to dart, and a trout.

I perceive that some white oaks are quite red. The black oaks are yellowish. I know not surely whether the brighter red and more divided leaf is that of the red or the scarlet oak.

The jointed polygonum in the Marlborough road is an interesting flower, it is so late, so bright a red, — though inobvious from its minuteness, —  without leaves, above the sand like sorrel, mixed with other minute flowers and the empty chalices of the trichostema.

I saw one blue curl still adhering.

The puffballs are split open and rayed out on the sand like five or ten (!) fingers.

The milkweed seeds must be carried far, for it is only when a strong wind is blowing that they are loosened from their pods.

An arrowhead at the desert.

Spergula arvensis --  corn-spurry (some call it tares) -- at the acorn tree.

Filled my pockets with acorns.

Found another gouge on Dennis's Hill. To have found the Indian gouges and tasted sweet acorns, is it not enough for one afternoon?

The sun set red in haze, visible fifteen minutes before setting, and the moon rose in like manner at the same time.

This evening, I am obliged to sit with my door and window open, in a thin coat, which I have not done for three weeks at least. A warm night like this at this season produces its effect on the village.

The boys are heard at play in the street now, at 9 o'clock, in greater force and with more noise than usual. My neighbor has got out his flute.

There is more fog than usual.

The moon is full.

The tops of the woods in the horizon seen above the fog look exactly like long, low black clouds, the fog being the color of the sky.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 8, 1851

This brook by Jenny's is always a pleasant sight and sound to me. See December 28, 1851 ("Some one has cut a hole in the ice at Jenny's Brook, and set a steel trap under water"), March 25, 1855 ("Was it not a sucker I saw dart along the brook beyond Jenny’s?")

I picked up some white oak acorns in the path by the wood-side, which I found to be unexpectedly sweet and palatable, the bitterness being scarcely perceptible. See November 24, 1860 ("The bitter-sweet of a white oak acorn which you nibble in a bleak November walk over the tawny earth is more to me than a slice of imported pineapple.");  September 11, 1859 ("No fruit is handsomer than the acorn . . .Very pretty, especially, are the white oak acorns, three raying from one centre.") See also October 11, 1860 ("There is a remarkably abundant crop of white oak acorns this fall, also a fair crop of red oak acorns; but not of scarlet and black, very few of them. The acorns are now in the very midst of their fall."); October 12, 1858 ("Acorns, red and white (especially the first), appear to be fallen or falling. They are so fair and plump and glossy that I love to handle them, and am loath to throw away what I have in my hand."); October 13, 1859 ("I see no acorns on the trees. They appear to have all fallen before this.")

The milkweed seeds must be carried far, for it is only when a strong wind is blowing that they are loosened from their pods. See  October 23, 1852  ("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. ") See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Milkweed.

The moon is full. See  October 10, 1851 ("The elms in the village have lost many of their leaves, and their shadows by moonlight are not so heavy as last month"); See alsoA Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, October Nights and Moonlight


October 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 8


The white oak acorns
are unexpectedly sweet
and platable. 

Milkweed seeds loosen 
only when a strong wind blows –
they must carry far.

The sun setting red
in haze at the same time as
the full moon rises.

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

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Thursday, October 7, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: October 7 (the mellowing year)

 


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 .


Indian-summer.
The sun comes out and lights up
the mellowing year.

Turning round, I am
surprised one more time by the
beauty of the world.

October 7, 2015




This morning the fog over the river and the brooks and meadows running into it has risen to the height of forty or fifty feet. October 7, 1851

A very still, warm, bright, clear afternoon. October 7, 1851. 

I sit on Poplar Hill. It is a warm Indian-summerish afternoon. October 7, 1852

When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it. October 7, 1857

Now is the time to behold the maple swamps, one mass of red and yellow, all on fire, as it were. See October 7, 1852

Nature holds her annual fair and gala days in October in every hollow and on every hillside. October 7, 1852

One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not see what the Puritans did at that season when the maples blazed out in scarlet. October 7, 1857

I see, some fifty rods off, looking toward the sun, the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, - a strip. . . of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. October 7, 1857

As usual, there is one tree-top of an especially brilliant scarlet, with which the others contrast. October 7, 1857

The bright-tinted shrubs about [Walden's] high shore on the sunny side were reflected from the water; . . . all reflected, dimly so far as the details of leaves, etc., were concerned, but brightly as to color, and, of course, in the order in which they stood, - -  scarlet, yellow, green, etc.; but, there being a slight ripple on the surface, these reflections . . .forming sharp pyramids of the several colors, gradually reduced to mere dusky points. The effect of this prolongation of the reflection was a very pleasing softening and blending of the colors. October 7, 1857

There was, accordingly, a sort of belt, as wide as the whole height of the hill, extending downward along the whole north or sunny side of the pond, composed of . . .inverted pyramids of the most brilliant colors intermixed. . . . reflected and re-reflected from ripple to ripple, losing brightness each time by the softest possible gradation, and tapering toward the beholder. October 7, 1857

This is one of the prettiest effects of the autumnal change. October 7, 1857

Little chincapin oaks are partly turned, dull scarlet or yellow as it may happen, nearly in prime, not fallen. October 7, 1857

Hornbeam generally green still, but becoming yellowish brown and falling. October 7, 1857

Black alder still green. October 7, 1857

Elder is greenish-yellow. October 7, 1857

I see some panicled andromeda dark red or crimson.October 7, 1857

Swamp-pink a dark reddish purple where exposed. October 7, 1857

Beach plum begins to turn a clear pale yellow in dry places. October 7, 1857

Sage willow is fairly yellowing and some even falling. October 7, 1857

Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there. October 7, 1857


I notice the Viola ovata, houstonia, Ranunculus repens, caducous polygala, small scratch-grass polygonum, autumnal dandelion (very abundant, yellowing the low turfy grounds and hills), small bushy white aster, a few goldenrods, Polygonum hydropiperoides and the unknown flowerless bidens, soapwort gentian (now turned dark purple), yarrow, the white erigeron, red clover, hedge-mustard.  October 7, 1852

Looking toward the sun from Lupine Bank, I see bloody patches of blackberry vines amid the fine hoary and sheeny grass of the pasture. October 7, 1857

Since the frosts such pastures are already a hoary russet. October 7, 1857

Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish. October 7, 1857

I see one small but spreading white oak full of acorns just falling and ready to fall. October 7, 1860


Some that have fallen have already split and sprouted, an eighth of an inch. October 7, 1860

I see, through the bright October air, a valley extending southwest and northeast and some two miles across, – so far I can see distinctly, — with a broad, yellow meadow tinged with brown at the bottom, and a blue river winding slowly through it northward, with a regular edging of low bushes on the brink, of the same color with the meadow. October 7, 1857

 Skirting the meadow are straggling lines, and occasionally large masses a quarter of a mile wide, of brilliant scarlet and yellow and crimson trees, backed by and mingled with green forests and green and hoary russet fields and hills; and on the hills around shoot up a million scarlet and orange and yellow and crimson fires amid the green; and here and there amid the trees, often beneath the largest and most graceful of those which have brown-yellow dome-like tops, are bright white or gray houses; and beyond stretches a forest, wreath upon wreath, and between each two wreaths I know lies a similar vale; and far beyond all, on the verge of the horizon, are half a dozen dark-blue mountain-summits. October 7, 1857

Large birds of a brilliant blue and white plumage are darting and screaming amid the glowing foliage a quarter of a mile below, while smaller blue birds warble faintly but sweetly around me. October 7, 1857

Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them. October 7, 1860

Our boat so small and low that we are close to the water. The weeds being dead and the weather cooler, the water is more transparent. October 7, 1851

The fishes are plainly seen. See a pickerel that has swallowed a smaller fish, with the tail projecting from his mouth. October 7, 1851

The sun comes out of clouds, and lights up and warms the whole scene. October 7, 1852

Windy. Elms bare. October 6 & 7, 1853

I see a hundred smokes arising through the yellow elm-tops in the village, where the villagers are preparing for tea. October 7, 1852

The sunshine harmonizes with the imbrowned and fiery foliage. October 7, 1852

But hark! I hear the tolling of a distant funeral bell, and they are conveying a corpse to the churchyard from one of the houses that I see, and its serious sound is more in harmony with this scenery than any ordinary bustle could be. October 7, 1857

There is a great difference between this season and a month ago, -- warm as this happens to be, -- as between one period of your life and another. October 7, 1851

Unless you look for reflections, you commonly will not find them. October 7, 1857 

It is perfect autumn. October 7, 1852

It is the mellowing year. October 7, 1852

October 7, 2017


*****


February 21, 1855 (“I look at the Peterboro mountains with my glass from Fair Haven Hill. I think that there can be no more arctic scene than these mountains in the edge of the horizon completely crusted over with snow, with the sun shining on them, seen through a telescope over bare, russet fields and dark forests ”)
March 18, 1858 ("When I get two thirds up the hill, I look round and am for the hundredth time surprised by the landscape of the river valley and the horizon with its distant blue scalloped rim. “);.
July 21, 1856 ("This has been a peculiarly fine afternoon. When I looked about casually, was surprised at the fairness of the landscape")
May 17, 1853 ("I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world.”)
May 22, 1854 ("How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!”)
August 25, 1859 ("quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden")
September 1, 1854 ("Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden")
September 16, 1854 (“I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.”)
September 27, 1858 ("What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns?”);
September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon. No such gust since spring.")
September 29,1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen")
October 1, 1858 ("The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. ")
October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard.”) 

Now and for a week
the chip-birds in flocks on the
withered grass and weeds.
October 7, 1860

October 10, 1853 ("Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.”)
October 12, 1852 (" The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”)
October 13, 1858 ("The elms are at least half bare.")
October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”)
October 17, 1857 ("How soon they have sprouted! “)
November 27, 1852 (“I find acorns which have sent a shoot down into the earth this fall.”)

October 7, 2017
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.

October 6 <<<<<<<<<  October 7 >>>>>>>>  October 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 7
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 © 2009-2023


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Elms bare.

 



October 6 and October 7. 

October 7, 2013



Windy. Elms bare.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 6 & 7, 1853


See October 7, 1852 ("In the village, the warm brownish-yellow elms") See also  September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon. No such gust since spring."); September 29,1854 ("The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen");  October 1, 1858 ("The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand. "); October 10, 1853 ("Cooler and windy at sunset, and the elm leaves come down again.”); October 12, 1852 (" The elms in the village, losing their leaves, reveal the birds' nests.”); October 13, 1858 ("The elms are at least half bare."); October 17, 1857 (“A great many more ash trees, elms, etc., are bare now.”)
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