September 23
P. M. — Round by Clematis Brook.
The forget-me-not still.
I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard's), more full and bright than any flower.
The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening.
The ash is just beginning to turn.
The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day.
I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes.
How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon than one would expect!
Some acorns and hickory nuts on the ground, but they have not begun to shell.
Is it the nut of the Carya amara, with raised seams, but not bitter, that I perceive?
I suppose that is the Carya tomentosa, or mockernut hickory, with large rounded nuts on Lee's land.
The bitternuts (?), rubbed together, smell like varnish.
The sarothra in bloom.
The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream.
Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared.
September 23, 2018
A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red.
The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink.
I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians.
Hamamelis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall.
A woodchuck out.
The waxwork not opened.
The "feathery tails" of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now.
Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes.
Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather-beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.
In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch-berries.
The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1852
The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink.
I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians.
Hamamelis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall.
A woodchuck out.
The waxwork not opened.
The "feathery tails" of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now.
Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes.
Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather-beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.
In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch-berries.
The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1852
The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. See note to September 25, 1852 ("The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.")
A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. See September 23, 1860 ("I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark."); See also November 10, 1858 ("In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple.")
The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red. See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red undersides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now."); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)
Carya amara, bitternut -- Carya tomentosa, mockernut hickory,( North American hickories include:
A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. See September 23, 1860 ("I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark."); See also November 10, 1858 ("In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple.")
How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon. See March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction. . . ., and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses . . and to the mountains in the horizon."); October 20, 1852 ("This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon: they show you fair weather from the midst of foul."); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 ("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.")
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