A dark and windy night .

October 2. 

A dark and windy night the last. It is a new value when darkness amounts to something positive. Each morning now, after rain and wind, is fresher and cooler, and leaves still green reflect a brighter sheen. 

Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once, and that was Noddle’s Island in the War of 1812. 

The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings. The cat comes in from an early walk amid the weeds. She is full of sparrows and wants no more breakfast this morning, unless it be a saucer of milk, the dear creature. I saw her studying ornithology between the corn-rows.

As I approached Perch Pool the other day, half a dozen frogs leaped into it and buried themselves in the mass of callitriche at the bottom. I stood looking for perch a minute or two, when one after another up came the frogs from out the callitriche, just as a piece of cork would rise by mere buoyancy to the surface; and then, by a distinct effort, they let go all, drop anchor, elevate or let float up their heels, and lie spread out on the surface. They were probably Rana fontinalis.  

Sailed to Baker Farm with a strong northwest wind.

Got a peck of the small long-bunched grapes now turned purple under Lee’s Cliff. One or two vines bear very plentifully. The bunches are about six inches long by one and a half, and quite dense and cylindrical commonly. They are now apparently just in their prime, to judge from color. Considerably later than the Vitis Labrusca, but are not good. [Mother [made] a nice jelly of them afterward.] 

A large chocolate-colored puffball “smokes. ”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1858

Each morning now, after rain and wind, is fresher and cooler, and leaves still green reflect a brighter sheen. See September 20, 1853 (It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer."); September 20, 1854 ("Windy rain-storm last night"); September 20, 1856 ("Rain in afternoon. Rain again in the night, hard."); ; September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall."); September 20, 1860 ("Rainy in forenoon.")


Minott told me yesterday that he had never seen the seashore but once in the War of 1812. . See March 23, 1854("Minott confesses to me to-day that he has not been to Boston since the last war, or 1815. Aunt said that he had not been ten miles from home since”)  January 8, 1857 ("Minott says he has lived where he now does as much as sixty years. He has not been up in town for three years, on account of his rheumatism ");  and note to October 4, 1851 ("Minott is, perhaps, the most poetical farmer — who most realizes to me the poetry of the farmer's life — that I know . . . He loves to walk in a swamp in windy weather and hear the wind groan through the pines.");

The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings. See October 4, 1859 (“Birds are now seen more numerously than before, as if called out by the fine weather, probably many migrating birds from the north.”); October 8, 1855 ("Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows . . .”); October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows .”)