Looking for pine cones, a time to see hornets' nests.

October 15

October 15, 2015

P. M. — Go to look for white pine cones, but see none. 

See a striped squirrel on a rail fence with some kind of weed in his mouth. Is it milkweed seed? At length he scuds swiftly along the middle rail past me, and, instead of running over or around the posts, he glides through the little hole in the post left above the rails, as swiftly as if there had been no post in the way. 

Thus he sped through five posts in succession in a straight line, incredibly quick, only stooping and straightening himself at the holes. 

The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone.  I see one a very perfect cone, like a pitch pine cone, uninjured by the birds, about twelve feet from the ground, by a swamp, three feet from the end of a maple twig and upheld by it alone passing through its top, about an inch deep, seven and a half inches wide, by eight long. A few sere maple leaves adorn and partly conceal the crown, at the ends of slight twigs which are buried in it. 

October 8, 2024

What a wholesome color! somewhat like the maple bark (and so again concealed) laid on in successive layers in arcs of circles a tenth of an inch wide, eye brow-wise, gray or even white or brown of various shades, with a few dried maple leaves sticking out the top of it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 15, 1855

Go to look for white pine cones, but see none. See September 9, 1857 ("To the Hill for white pine cones. Very few trees have any. I can only manage small ones, fifteen or twenty feet high, climbing till I can reach the dangling green pickle-like fruit in my right hand, while I hold to the main stem with my left");, September 18, 1859 ("There is an abundant crop of cones on the white pines this year, and they are now for the most part brown and open . . . How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!"); September 18, 1860 ("White pine cones (a small crop), and all open that I see. [Are they not last year's] ?") . October 6, 1857 ("I see thousands of white pine cones on the ground, fresh light brown, which lately opened and shed their seeds and lie curled up on the ground. The seeds are rather pleasant or nutritious tasting, taken in quantity, like beech nuts, methinks"); October 8, 1856 ("At length I discover some white pine cones, a few . . . are all open, and the seeds, all the sound ones but one, gone. So September is the time to gather them."); October 13, 1860 ("So far as I have observed, if pines or oaks bear abundantly one year they bear little or nothing the next year. This year, so far as I observe, there are scarcely any white pine cones (were there any ?). . . This is a white oak year, not a pine year."); October 19, 1855 ("I see at last a few white pine cones open on the trees, but almost all appear to have fallen."); November 3, 1853 ("I see many white pine cones fallen and open, with a few seeds still in them."); November 4, 1855 ("I have failed to find white pine seed this year, though I began to look for it a month ago. The cones were fallen and open. Look the first of September.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

See a striped squirrel on a rail fence . . . scuds swiftly along the middle rail past me, and, instead of running over or around the posts, he glides through the little hole in the post left above the rails, as swiftly as if there had been no post in the way. See October 8, 1857 ("The chipmunk, the wall-going squirrel, that will cross a broad pasture on the wall, now this side, now that, now on top, and lives under it, — as if it were a track laid for him expressly. "); November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday . . . And the last striped squirrel, too, perchance, yesterday.") See alsoA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Striped Squirrel

The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone . . . What a wholesome color . . . laid on in successive layers in arcs.  See September 25, 1851 ("The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance."); September 28, 1851 ("Here was a large hornets' nest . . . out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day."); October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window."); October 25, 1854 ("The maples being bare, the great hornet nests are exposed.") See also A Book of the Seasons,by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets

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

Looking for pine cones –

a time to see hornets' nests 

the hornets now gone.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

Looking for pine cones

 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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