Are there any finer days in the year than these?

September 22.

The river is peculiarly smooth and the water clear and sunny as I look from the stone bridge. A painted tortoise with his head out, outside of the weeds, looks as if resting in the air with head and flippers outstretched.

As I look off from the hilltop, wonder if there are any finer days in the year than these. The air is so fine and more bracing, and the landscape has acquired some fresh verdure withal. The frosts come to ripen the year, the days, like fruits. 

September 22, 2020

Crossing the hill behind Minott’s just as the sun is preparing to dip below the horizon, the thin haze in the atmosphere north and south along the west horizon reflects a purple tinge and bathes the mountains with the same, like a bloom on fruits. Is it not another evidence of the ripe days?

What if we were to walk by sunlight with equal abstraction and aloofness, yet with equally impartial observation and criticism. As if it shone not for you, nor you for it, but you had come forth into it for the nonce to admire it. 

By moonlight we are not of the earth earthy, but we are of the earth spiritual. So might we walk by sunlight, seeing the sun but as a moon, a comparatively faint and reflected light, and the day as a brooding night, in which we glimpse some stars still.

By moonlight all is simple. We are enabled to erect ourselves, our minds, on account of the fewness of objects. We are no longer distracted. It is simple as bread and water. It is simple as the rudiments of an art, — a lesson to be taken before sunlight, perchance, to prepare us for that.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1854

Any finer days in the year than these. The air is so fine and more bracing. See September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings."); See also September 18, 1858 ("It is a wonderful day."); 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 . . . preceded by frosty mornings."); September 21, 1859 ("A peculiarly fine September day, looking toward the fall, warm and bright.") Also see A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

By moonlight all is simple. We are no longer distracted. See September 21, 1851 ("Moonlight is peculiarly favorable to reflection. It is a cold and dewy light in which the vapors of the day are condensed, and though the air is obscured by darkness, it is more clear.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau, September Moonlight

September 22. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 22

Now for bracing days

when frosts come to ripen the

year – the days – like fruit.

Are there any finer days

in the year than these?

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Are there any finer days?

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-540922

The first frost last night

September 21. 

September 21, 2014

The first frost in our yard last night, the grass white and stiff in the morning. The muskmelon vines are now blackened in the sun. The forenoon is cold, and I have a fire, but it is a fine clear day, as I find when I come forth to walk in the afternoon. 

A fine-grained air, seething or shimmering as I look over the fields, reminds me of the Indian summer that is to come. Do not these days always succeed the first frosty mornings?

The red maples, especially at a distance, begin to light their fires, some turning yellow, and within the woods many oak, e.g. scarlet and black and chestnut, and other leaves begin to show their colors. 

With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony and the heads of the dilapidated goldenrods. 

The gentian is already frost-bitten almost as soon as it is open. 

Those pretty little white oak acorn stars of three rays are now quite common on the ground. 

Lobelia Dortmanna still out at Flint’s Pond. 

The pond is low near the bathing-rock. 

I hear many jays since the frosts began. The nuthatch is common in woods and on street. Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 21, 1854

The first frost in our 

yard last night the grass white and 

stiff in the morning.

See September 7, 1857 ("Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us."); September 11, 1854 ("This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first - in these respects- decidedly autumnal evening") ;  September 14, 1852 ("This morning the first frost"); September 15, 1851 ("Ice in the pail under the pump, and quite a frost . . .  the potato vines and the beans which were still green are now blackened and flattened by the frost."); September 15, 1859 ("This morning the first frost in the garden, killing some of our vines."); September 16, 1854 ("There have been a few slight frosts in some places. "); September 18, 1854 ("I see the potatoes all black with frosts that have occurred within a night or two in Moore’s Swamp."); September 20, 1851 ("On Monday of the present week water was frozen in a pail under the pump. . . .All tender herbs are flat in gardens and meadows. The cranberries, too, are touched.") ;September 20, 1855 ("First decisive frost, killing melons and beans, browning button-bushes and grape leaves.."); 

 September 22.

These bracing fine days

when frosts come to ripen the

year, the days, like fruit.

September 22, 1854

September 23.

The summer concludes

with the crisis of first frosts.

The end of berries.

September 23, 1854

September 26, 1858 ("Another smart frost, making dry walking amid the stiffened grass in the morning. "); September 28, 1860 ("This morning we had a very severe frost, the first to kill our vines, etc., in garden; what you may call a black frost, - making things look black. Also ice under pump."); September 29, 1860 ("Another hard frost and a very cold day."): September 30, 1860 ("Frost and ice."); October 1, 1852 ("A severer frost last night");. October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white.”); October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively"); October 6, 1858 ("Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight"); .October 10, 1857 ("Certainly these are .the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this."); October 11, 1857 ("Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest."); October 11, 1859 ("There was a very severe frost this morning (ground stiffened)"); October 12, 1859 ("There are now apparently very few ferns left . . . This morning's frost will nearly finish them . . . We have now fairly begun to be surrounded with the brown of withered foliage.  . . This phenomenon begins with the very earliest frost (as this year August 17th), which kills some ferns and other most sensitive plants; and so gradually the plants, or their leaves, are killed and withered that we scarcely notice it till we are surrounded with the scenery of November."); October 13, 1860 ("Now, as soon as the frost strips the maples, and their leaves strew the swamp floor and conceal the pools,; October 15, 1853 ("Last night the first smart frost that I have witnessed. Ice formed under the pump, and the ground was white long after sunrise."); ; October 15, 1856 (“A smart frost . . . Ground stiffened in morning; ice seen.”); October 16, 1856 (“Ground all white with frost. ”); October 17, 1856 ("Frost has now within three or four days turned almost all flowers to woolly heads, — their November aspect"); October 19, 1856 ("The hypericums — the whole plant — have now generally been killed by the frost"); October 21, 1857 (“First ice that I’ve seen or heard of, a tenth of an inch thick in yard, and the ground is slightly frozen.”); October 21, 1852 ("Apparently some flowers yield to the frosts, others linger here and there till the snow buries them."); October 30, 1853(" A white frost this morning, lasting late into the day. This has settled the accounts of many plants which lingered still . . . What with the rains and frosts and winds, the leaves have fairly fallen now. You may say the fall has ended.")

The forenoon is cold, and I have a fire, but it is a fine clear day, as I find when I come forth to walk in the afternoon. See September 21, 1857 ("The warmth of the sun is just beginning to be appreciated again on the advent of cooler days.") See also August 29, 1854 ("I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. ")

The autumnal dandelion. See September 13, 1856 ("Surprised at the profusion of autumnal dandelions in their prime on the top of the hill") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The gentian is already frost-bitten almost as soon as it is open. See September 14, 1856 ("To Hubbard's Close. Fringed gentian well out (and some withered or frost-bitten ?), say a week, though there was none to be seen here August 27th. "); October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively."); October 2, 1857 ("The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered"); October 17, 1856 ("Many fringed gentians quite fresh yet, though most are faded and withered. I suspect that their very early and sudden fading and withering has nothing, or little, to do with frost after all, for why should so many fresh ones succeed still? My pressed ones have all faded in like manner! !"); October 19, 1852 ("I found the fringed gentian now some what stale and touched by frost,"); October 27, 1855 ("There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

I hear many jays since the frosts began. See Septemberr 21, 1859 ("Jays are more frequently heard of late, maybe because other birds are more silent."); See also September 14, 1854 ("This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more.");  September 25, 1851 ("In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions. ") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher. See September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink (Rufous-sided Towhee)

September 19. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 21

The first frost last night –

cold but a fine clear day for

an afternoon walk.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The first frost last night

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-540921

Windy rain-storm last night

September 20.

Windy rain-storm last night. 

See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles about the willows and button-bushes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1854

Windy rain-storm last night. See note to September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.")

See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles See September 20, 1859 ("A blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle. Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?")

Like light reflected from a fog-bank. A season of prolonged youth.

September 19. 

September 19, 2014

Viburnum Lentago berries now perhaps in prime, though there are but few blue ones.

Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realize how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I think with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I have spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. 

I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! 

I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter?

It has been my vacation, my season of growth and expansion, a prolonged youth.

An upland plover goes off from Conantum top (though with a white belly), uttering a sharp white, tu white. 

That drought was so severe that a few trees here and there—birch, maple, chestnut, apple, oak—have lost nearly all their leaves. 

I see large flocks of robins with a few flickers, the former keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping. 

Many pignuts have fallen. 

Hardhack is very commonly putting forth new leaves where it has lost the old. They are half an inch or three quarters long, and green the stems well. 

The stone-crop fruit has for a week or more had a purplish or pinkish tinge by the roadside. Fallen acorns in a few days acquire that wholesome shining dark chestnut color. 

Did I see a returned yellow redpoll fly by? 

I saw, some nights ago, a great deal of light reflected from a fog-bank over the river upon Monroe’s white fence, making it conspicuous almost as by moonlight from my window. 

September 19, 2014

(And in the distance

a maple by the water, 

beginning to blush.)

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 19, 1854

I see large flocks of robins with a few flickers, the former keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping. See August 21, 1854 ("I see robins in small flocks and pigeon woodpeckers with them."); September 21, 1853 ("[Near Bangor] saw robins in flocks going south.")

tinyurl.com/HDTFOG

The sequence of fall flowers

September 18.

Fringed gentian near Peter’s out a short time, but as there is so little, and that has been cut off by the mowers, and this is not the leading stem that blooms, it may after all be earlier than the hazel. 

Viburnum nudum in flower again.

I see the potatoes all black with frosts that have occurred within a night or two in Moore’s Swamp.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 18, 1854

The fringed gentian. See  October 19, 1852 ("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.")  

Fringed gentian . . . may after all be earlier than the hazel. See September 18, 1856 ("The gentian is now far more generally out here than the hazel."); September 18, 1859 ("From the observation of this year I should say that the fringed gentian opened before the witch-hazel.”); October 2, 1853 ("The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively. As the witch-hazel is raised above frost and can afford to be later, for this reason also I think it is so.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau: The Fringed Gentian

Viburnum nudum in flower again. Compare 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.") See also  September 16, 1859 ("So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring."); September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Viburnums

I see the potatoes all black with frosts that have occurred within a night or two in Moore’s Swamp. See September 18, 1860 ("Corn-stalk-tops are stacked about the fields; potatoes are being dug; smokes are seen in the horizon. It is the season of agricultural fairs.") See also August 12, 1856 ("What a wilderness of weeds is Moore's Swamp now! Tall rough goldenrods, erechthites, poke, Aster Radula, dogwood, etc., etc. It looks as if the potatoes which grew there would be poisonous."); September 11, 1854 ("This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost"); September 15, 1851 ("The potato vines and the beans which were still green are now blackened and flattened by the frost."); September 15, 1859 ("This morning the first frost in the garden, killing some of our vines."); September 16, 1854 ("There have been a few slight frosts in some places.")

September 18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The sequence of fall flowers

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

Little flocks of chip-birds

September 16.

Sophia and mother returned from Wachusett. S. saw much bayberry in Princeton. 

September 16, 2016

P. M. —To Fringed Gentian Meadow over Assabet and to Dugan Desert. 

I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now? 

There have been a few slight frosts in some places. The clematis is feathered. One Asclepias Cornuti begun to discount. I see many hardhacks in the lichen pasture by Tommy Wheeler’s which are leafing out again conspicuously. 

I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise. 

I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest. As the eggs were laid the 7th of June, it makes about three months before they came out of the ground. The nest is full of sand and egg shells. I see no tracks of the old one. I take out the remaining one, and it begins slowly to crawl toward the brook about five rods distant.  It is so slow that I can not stop to watch it, and so carry it to within seven or eight inches of the water, turning its head inland. At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 16, 1854

One Asclepias Cornuti begun to discount. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by . . . notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood.") ; September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting."); October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting."); November 20, 1858 ("he common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting") See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.

I see little flocks of chip-birds. See September 1, 1854 ("Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden."); October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns, and they are divided by a light line") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow 

 I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now? See September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta . . . to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle.")October 21, 1857 ("I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)

The eggs were laid the 7th. See June 7, 1854 ("A snapping turtle . . . had just been excavating.”) \

At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water. See September 11, 1854 (“At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water”)  See August 26, 1854 (“Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs. Its eyes are open. It puts out its head, stretches forth its claws, and liberates its tail. With its great head it has already the ugliness of the full-grown, and is already a hieroglyphic of snappishness. . . . I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles.”)

September 16.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 16

Flocks of chip-birds rise

along the roadside showing

their light undersides.

A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, Little flocks of chip-birds 

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-540916

The witch-hazel in flower.

September 15.

The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th. 

(It was abundantly out yesterday on Wachusett Mountain, where it is probably more exposed to the sun and drier. Sophia was there.)

Its leaves, a third or a half of them, are yellow and brown. 

September 15, 2014

Solidago speciosa at Clamshell out several days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 15, 1854

The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th. See September 8, 1854 ("The witch-hazel on Dwarf Sumach Hill looks as if it would begin to blossom in a day or two."); September 8, 1856 ("Witch-hazel out, maybe a day or two, in some places,"); September 18, 1856 (The witch-hazel at Conantum just begun here and there; some may have been out two or three days.Yet I saw the witch-hazel out in Brattleboro September 8th, then apparently for a day or two ."); September 29, 1853 ("The witch-hazel at Lee's Cliff, in a fair situation, has but begun to blossom; has not been long out, so that I think it must be later than the gentian. Its leaves are yellowed.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

Solidago speciosa at Clamshell out several days. See September 27, 1856 (“To Clamshell by boat. Solidago speciosa not quite out!!”); September 29, 1853 ("Solidago speciosa out in Hubbard's Swamp . . .say ten days ago. This must be a late one, then.");  October 2, 1856 ("Solidago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th)

September 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 15

Witch-hazel opened –

a third or half of its leaves

are yellow and brown.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The witch-hazel in flower.

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-540915