First frost; fall colors

September 21. 

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, 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