The creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady.

August 20. 

Edward Hoar has found in his garden two or three specimens of what appears to be the Veronica Bumbaumii, which blossomed at least a month ago. Yet I should say the pods were turgid, and, though obcordate enough, I do not know in what sense they are “obcordate-triangular.” 

He found a Viburnum dentatum with leaves somewhat narrower than common and wedge shaped at base. He has also the Rudbeckia speciosa, cultivated in a Concord garden. 

Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morning he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow. Up early enough to see a frost in August! 

P. M. — To Poplar Hill and the Great Fields. 

It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. 

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches. 

Both willows and poplars have leaves of a light color, at least beneath, contrasting with most other trees.

Generally there has been no drought this year. Nothing in the landscape suggests it. Yet no doubt these leaves are, compared with themselves six or eight weeks ago, as usual, “horny and dry,” as one remarks by my side. 

You see them digging potatoes, with cart and barrels, in the fields on all hands, before they are fairly ripe, for fear of rot or a fall in the price, and I see the empty barrels coming back from market already. 

Polygonum dumetorum, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1858

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color . . . See July 24, 1852 ("When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination.")

This weather is a preface to autumn. See August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character")