A Book of the Seasons: September 3 (an autumnal day, goldenrod, berries and butterflies, johnswort after the rain, a sea-change or tide of thought)

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

September 3

daybreak

September 3, 2018

Now is the season

for beautiful berries which

are not food for man.  

 September 3, 1853

Warm night moon waning –

as I go along the road

hear an apple fall.

Seotember 3, 1852

Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, – a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness.  September 3, 1860

Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild

berries which are not food for man . . . To fill my basket with the neglected but beautiful fruit of the various species of cornels and viburnums, poke, arum, medeola, thorns, etc.  September 3, 1853

Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower. September 3, 1853

I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. September 3, 1856

One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster. September 3, 1856

Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. September 3, 1856

 I look for fringed gentian. September 3, 1856

In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described. September 3, 1854

Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian.  September 3, 1856

Fall dandelions stand thick in the meadows. September 3, 1851

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), covered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful than ever, -- the hypericums, for instance. They are equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops. September 3, 1851

 The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.  September 3, 1858

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. September 3, 1854

The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. September 3, 1856

I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown and muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drifting pad which he partly sinks.  September 3, 1856

I see where the bank by the Pokelogan is whitewashed, i. e. the grass, for a yard or two square, by the thin droppings of some bird which has roosted on a dead limb above. It was probably a blue heron, for I find some slate-blue feathers dropped, apparently curving breast feathers, broadly shafted with white.  September 3, 1858  

I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing? September 3, 1858 

A slate-colored snowbird back. September 3, 1857

Of late I have not heard the wood thrush. September 3, 1852

Though it is warm enough, I notice again the swarms of fuzzy gnats dancing in the cooler air, which also is decidedly autumnal.     September 3, 1860

See no fireflies.  September 3, 1852

A strong wind, which blows down much fruit. R. W. E. sits surrounded by choice windfall pears. September 3, 1859

The winds which the sun has aroused go down at evening, and the lunar influence may then perchance be detected. September 3, 1852 

 I will endeavor to separate the tide in my thoughts, or what is due to the influence of the moon, from the current distractions and fluctuations. September 3, 1852 

1 A. M., moon waning . . . I hear an apple fall, as I go along the road.  September 3, 1852 

My thoughts suffered a sea-turn. September 3, 1854

September 3, 2023

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:

  Arum Berries

 Cucumber Root (medeola)

 Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

The Fringed Gentian

The Polygala

 St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

 the Autumnal Dandelion

The White Pines

The October Pine Fall

Fuzzy Gnats (tipulidæ)

Yellow Butterflies

Fireflies

the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

 the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

the Blue Heron

The Wood  Thrush

 Young Birds

September Moonlight

 The world can never be more beautiful than now 

September 3, 2023

*****

July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road.")

July 26, 1854  ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places.") 

August 12, 1854 ("Have not heard a wood thrush since last week of July.")

August 14, 1853 ("I hear no wood thrushes for a week.")

August 26, 1853 ("The fall dandelion is as conspicuous and abundant now in Tuttle's meadow as buttercups in the spring. It takes their place.")

August 29, 1852 ("The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall")

August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”) 

September 1, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, not quite in prime, but very abundant.")

September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon..")

September 2, 1856 ("Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves”) 

September 2, 1859 ("The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides.")

Clear air cloudless sky 

decidedly autumnal

a beautiful day 

September 3, 1860

September 5, 1857 ("I now see those brown shaving like stipules of the white pine leaves, which are falling, i.e. the stipules, and caught in cobwebs.”)

September 11, 1859 ("This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon.") 

September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls")

September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green. ") 

September 24,1854 ("On the large sassafras trees on the hill I see many of the handsome red club-shaped pedicels left, with their empty cups . . .”)  

September 3, 2022

to separate 

the tide in my thoughts 

from 

the current distractions 

and fluctuations

September 3, 2022

January 22, 1852 ("My thoughts are my company."); March 1, 1860 ("I have thoughts, as I walk, on some subject that is running in my head, but all their pertinence seems gone before I can get home to set them down"); June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. ”); July 26, 1853 ("I mark again the sound of crickets or locusts about alders, etc. about this time when the first asters open . . . Such little objects check the diffuse tide of our thoughts and bring it to a head, which thrills us.");] August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness?"); August 29, 1859 ("But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field. "); September 14, 1859 (""Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. . . . our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last.); September 21, 1851 ("Is not the poet who walks by night conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence, in which the ocean within him overflows its shores and bathes the dry land? Has he not his spring-tides and his neap-tides, the former sometimes combining with the winds of heaven to produce those memorable high tides of the calendar which leave their marks for ages?")

Blue-stem and white goldenrod

September 3, 2023

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

September 2  <<<<<<<<<<    September 3   >>>>>>>>>  September 4

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 3

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

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

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2023

 

tinyurl.com/HDT03SEPT

A Book of the Seasons: September 2 (welcome coolness, expectant mInd, nature's fruit, fertile thought, now i can write)

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

September 2

The air of late is

cooler clearer autumnal

now after the rain.

September 2, 1859

September 2, 2016

It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart. September 2, 1851

There is a stillness in nature for want of singing birds, commenced a month or more ago; only the crickets’ louder creak to supply their place. September 2, 1852

Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably. September 2, 1854

The first coolness is welcome, so serious and fertile of thought. September 2, 1851

Now, after the first rain raising the river, the first assault on the summer's sluggishness, the air is of late cooler and clearer, autumnal,  September 2, 1859

It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood. . . .My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things. September 2, 1856

The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground. September 2, 1853

Large yellow birches branch low and form a dense broom-like head of many long tapering branches. September 2, 1857

The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore. September 2, 1854

The sarothra grows thickly, and is now abundantly in bloom, on denuded places, i.e., where the sod and more or less soil has been removed, by sandy roadsides. September 2, 1859

Solidago nemoralis apparently in prime, and S. stricta  . . . johnswort, now merely lingering.  September 2, 1860

Sept. 2. P. M. - Collected and brought home in a pail of water this afternoon the following asters and diplopappi, going by Turnpike and Hubbard's Close to Saw Mill Brook, and returning by Goose Pond: 

(1) A. Tradescanti  now well under way , most densely flowered, by low roadsides ; 
(2) dumosus, perhaps the most prevalent of the small whitish ones , especially in wood - paths ; 
(3) Diplopappus linariifolius, quite common ;
(4) A. patens, at present by far the most common of the decidedly purple asters, in dry ground ; 
(5) undulatus, just begun to be common ;
(6) acuminatus, low whorl , leafy , under a shady copse , where it appears to have been rayless , scarce ; 
(7) longifolius, within a few days quite common in low ground ; and 
(8) puniceus, very common in like places for a good while ;
(9) Radula, now rather pale and stale in low grounds ; 
(10) miser  not as yet widely dispersed , but common in Saw Mill Brook Path ; 
(11) Diplopappus umbellatus, abundant in low grounds ; 
(12) lævis, I did not chance to see in this walk  but found it common the next morning, on hillside by Moore's Swamp.

Thes twelve are all I know excepting corymbosus  in Miles Swamp and elsewhere, long time, not common ; also macrophyllus , long since  not blooming this year; multiflorus, in dry roadsides  not yet (at least) common; and Diplopappus cornifolius, Bittern Cliff woods, prob-ably out of bloom. September 2, 1853

Some bass trees blossomed sparingly after all, for I see some fruit. September 2, 1857

The maple-leaved viburnum berries are a dark purple or black now. September 2, 1853

The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves. September 2, 1853

Some of the small early blueberry bushes are a clear red (Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum), and the lingering clusters of blueberries contrast strangely with the red leaves of the V. vacillans. September 2, 1856

I feel this difference between great poetry and small: that in the one, the sense outruns and overflows the words; in the other, the words the sense. September 2, 1856

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto  . . . Expression is the act of the whole man . . .  A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing.   September 2, 1851

September 2, 2015

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,\:

The Luxury of  Bathing

Summer

the Autumnal Dandelion

St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

 Helianthus

 The Basswood

 the Yellow Birch

Cucumber Root (medeola)

Arum Berries

The Blueberries

Viburnum lentago  (nannyberry)

September

to effect the quality of the day

September 2, 2013

September 2, 2014

May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him.”)

June 3, 1857 (“The bass at the Island will not bloom this year. (?)”)

July 9, 1857 ( I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum.”)

August 12, 1856 (“The sarothra — as well as small hypericums generally — has a lemon scent.”)

August 16, 1856 ("By the discovery of one new plant all bounds seem to be infinitely removed“)

August 27, 1851 ("The Medeola Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green fruit.")

August 30, 1856 ("The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 p. m. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee.”)

September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon")

This beautiful spot

at the top of the moss trail

clear September day

The shadows lengthen —

sun flashes between the trees

walking briskly home.

~zphx20160902

September 3, 1860 ("Here is a beautiful, and perhaps first decidedly autumnal, day, -- a, cloudless sky, a clear air, with, maybe, veins of coolness”)

September 6, 1858 ("Solidago nemoralis is apparently in prime on Lupine Hill; some of it past. It is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it")

September 7, 1858 ("It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun") 

September 28, 1856 (“The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. . . .It is one of the most remarkable and dazzling, if not the handsomest, fruits we have.”)

October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”)

November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”)

November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of”)

January 23, 1858. (" It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.")

September 2, 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.

  April 7, 1853 

September 1 <<<<<<<<<<    September 2 >>>>>>>>>>>  September 3

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 2 

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT02SEPT 

The Poem I Would Have Writ

 

August 28. Saturday.

A great poet will write for his peers alone, and indite no line to an inferior. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and calmly expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

Johnson can no more criticise Milton than the naked eye can criticise Herschel's map of the sun.

The art which only gilds the surface and demands merely a superficial polish, without reaching to the core, is but varnish and filigree. 

But the work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates the lapse of time and has an ingrained polish, which still appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality of its substance. Its beauty is its strength. 

It breaks with a lustre, and splits in cubes and diamonds. Like the diamond, it has only to be cut to be polished, and its surface is a window to its interior splendors.

True verses are not counted on the poet's fingers, but on his heart-strings.

        My life hath been the poem I would have writ,
        But I could not both live and live to utter it.

In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He is at length lost in Brahma himself, "the divine male." Indeed, the distinction of races in this life is only the commencement of a series of degrees which ends in Brahma.

The veneration in which the Vedas are held is itself a remarkable fact. Their code embraced the whole moral life of the Hindoo, and in such a case there is no other truth than sincerity. 

Truth is such by reference to the heart of man within, not to any standard without. There is no creed so false but faith can make it true.

In inquiring into the origin and genuineness of this scripture it is impossible to tell when the divine agency in its composition ceased, and the human began. "From fire, from air, and from the sun" was it "milked out."

There is no grander conception of creation anywhere. It is peaceful as a dream, and so is the annihilation of the world. It is such a beginning and ending as the morning and evening, for they had learned that God's methods are not violent. It was such an awakening as might have been heralded by the faint dreaming chirp of the crickets before the dawn.

The very indistinctness of its theogony implies a sublime truth. It does not allow the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, but directly hints of a supremer still which created the last. The creator is still behind, increate. 

The divinity is so fleeting that its attributes are never expressed.


H. D Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1841

The poem I would have writ. See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; also Walden (Solitude) ("By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. 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. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.") 


See also August 5, 1851 ("As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where. I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment. ... I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself.”); August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?"); November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); and August 8, 1852 ("I am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself")

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Poem I Would Have Writ

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-410828

The universe built round us.

August 24. 

Let us wander where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we are central still. 

By reason of this, if we look into the heavens, they are concave, and if we were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it would be concave also. 

The sky is curved downward to the earth in the horizon, because I stand in the plain. I draw down its skirts. 

The stars so low there seem loth to go away from me, but by a circuitous path to be remembering and returning to me. 

H. D Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1841

Botonizing up the Railroad

August 8.

5 A.M.  -- Up railroad. The nabalus, which may have been out one week elsewhere.  

Also rough hawkweed, and that large asterlike flower Diplopappus umbellatus, a day or two. 

Smooth speedwell again. 

Erechthites. 

Columbine again. 

The first watermelon. 

Aster patens and Aster laevis, both a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1853

The nabalus, which may have been out one week elsewhere. See note to September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime")

Also rough hawkweed. See July 21, 1851 ("The rough hawkweed, too, resembling in its flower the autumnal dandelion.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Hawkweeds (hieracium)

That large asterlike flower Diplopappus. [Tall flat-top white aster] See August 1, 1856 ("Diplopappus umbellatus at Peter's wall."); August 24, 1853 ("D. umbellatus is conspicuous enough in some places (low grounds)"); August 24, 1859 ("Diplopappus umbellatus, how long?"); See August 31, 1853 ("The great white umbel-like tops of the Diplopappus umbellatus"); September 1, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaching it, but not much seen."); September 24, 1856 ("D. umbellatus, still abundant.")

Smooth speedwell again. See May 24, 1853 ("The smooth speedwell is in its prime now, whitening the sides of the back road . . . Its sweet little pansy like face looks up on all sides.")

Erechthites. See July 24, 1853 ("There is erechthites there [at Hubbard’s burnt meadow.], budded.") ; August 1, 1856 ("Erechthites, apparently two or three days, by Peter's Path, end of Cemetery, the middle flowers first.")

The first watermelon. See August 11, 1852 ("We had a ripe watermelon on the 7th."); August 19, 1851 ("Gathered our first watermelon to-day."); August 28, 1856 ("First watermelon.")

Aster patens and Aster laevis, both a day or two. July 13, 1856 ("Am surprised to see an Aster laevis, out a day or two, in road on sandy bank.") See July 19, 1854 ("I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens "); July 27, 1853 ("I notice to-day the first purplish aster... The afternoon of the year.”); August 10, 1853 (" I see again the Aster patens . . . though this has no branches nor minute leaves atop.") see also August 12, 1856 ("The Aster patens is very handsome by the side of Moore's Swamp on the bank, — large flowers, more or less purplish or violet, each commonly (four or five) at the end of a long peduncle, three to six inches long, at right angles with the stem, giving it an open look.”); August 21, 1856 ("The commonest asters now are, 1st, the Radula; 2d, dumosus; 3d, patens; 4th, say puniceus; 5th, cordtfolius; 6th, macrophyllus; (these two a good while); 7th, say Tradescanti ; 8th, miser; 9th, longifolius; (these three quite rare yet); 10th, probably acuminatus, some time (not seen); 11th, undulatus; 12th, loevis; (these two scarcely to be seen yet)."); September 18, 1857 ("Going along the low path under Bartlett's Cliff, the Aster laevis flowers, when seen toward the sun, are very handsome, having a purple or lilac tint.")

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

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