November 21
It is worth the while to see how green and lusty they are yet, still adding to their stock of nutriment for another year; and between the green and also withering leaves it does me good to see their great crimson round tops, sometimes quite above ground, they are so bold. They remind me of rosy cheeks in cool weather, and indeed there is a relationship.
All kinds of harvestry, even pulling turnips when the first cold weather numbs your fingers, are interesting, if you have been the sower, and have not sown too many.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 21, 1860
Another finger-cold evening, which I improve in pulling my turnips See November 13, 1851 ("A day when you cannot pluck a flower, cannot dig a parsnip, nor pull a turnip, for the frozen ground!"); November 14, 1855 ("Mr. Rice . . . remembered a similar season fifty-four years ago, and he remembered it because on the 13th of November that year he was engaged in pulling turnips and saw wild geese go over, when one came to tell him that his father was killed by a bridge giving way."); November 22, 1853 ("Turnip freshly in bloom in cultivated fields; knawel still; yarrow is particularly fresh and innocent."); November 24, 1855 ("[I]tis time to put [apples] in the cellar, and the turnips.")
Another finger-
cold evening, which I improve
pulling my turnips.
Their crimson round tops
remind me of rosy cheeks . . .
the first cold weather.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pulling turnips in cold weather
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 © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-601121
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