Tuesday, September 28, 2021

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look.



September 28.

September 28, 2014

A considerable part of the last two nights and yesterday, a steady and rather warm rain, such as we have not had for a long time. This morning it is still completely overcast and drizzling a little.

Flocks of small birds — apparently sparrows, bobolinks (or some bird of equal size with a pencilled breast which makes a musical clucking), and piping goldfinches 


— are flitting about like leaves and hopping up on to the bent grass stems in the garden, letting themselves down to the heavy heads, either shaking or picking out a seed or two, then alighting to pick it up.

I am amused to see them hop up on to the slender, drooping grass stems; then slide down, or let themselves down, as it were foot over foot, with great fluttering, till they can pick at the head and release a few seeds; then alight to pick them up. They seem to prefer a coarse grass which grows like a weed in the garden between the potato-hills, also the amaranth.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. They say that this has been a good year to raise turkeys, it has been so dry. So that we shall have something to be thankful for.


Hugh Miller, in his “Old Red Sandstone,” speaking of  “the consistency of style which obtains among the ichthyolites of this formation” and the “microscopic beauty of these ancient fishes,” says: 
“The artist who sculptured the cherry stone consigned it to a cabinet, and placed a microscope beside it; the microscopic beauty of these ancient fish was consigned to the twilight depths of a primeval ocean.

There is a feeling which at times grows upon the painter and the statuary, as if the perception and love of the beautiful had been sublimed into a kind of moral sense.

Art comes to be pursued for its own sake; the exquisite conception in the mind, or the elegant and elaborate model, becomes all in all to the worker, and the dread of criticism or the appetite of praise almost nothing.

And thus, through the influence of a power somewhat akin to conscience, but whose province is not the just and the good, but the fair, the refined, the exquisite, have works prosecuted in solitude, and never intended for the world, been found fraught with loveliness."

The hesitation with which this is said — to say nothing of its simplicity betrays a latent infidelity more fatal far than that of the “Vestiges of Creation,” which in another work this author endeavors to correct.

He describes that as an exception which is in fact the rule.

The supposed want of harmony between “the perception and love of the beautiful” and a delicate moral sense betrays what kind of beauty the writer has been conversant with. He speaks of his work becoming all in all to the worker, his rising above the dread of criticism and the appetite of praise, as if these were the very rare exceptions in a great artist's life, and not the very definition of it.


2 P. M. – To Conantum.

A warm, damp, mistling day, without much wind.

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled, — reminding me of some plants like the milkweed, expanding with maturity and pushing off their downy seeds. They have a singularly soft look.

For a week or ten days I have ceased to look for new flowers or carry my botany in my pocket.

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime.

I see where the squirrels have carried off the ears of corn more than twenty rods from the corn-field into the woods. A little further on, beyond Hubbard's Brook, I saw a gray squirrel with an ear of yellow corn a foot long sitting on the fence, fifteen rods from the field. He dropped the corn, but continued to sit on the rail, where I could hardly see him, it being of the same color with himself, which I have no doubt he was well aware of.

He next took to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal himself behind the stem, hanging perfectly still there till I passed, his fur being exactly the color of the bark. When I struck the tree and tried to frighten him, he knew better than to run to the next tree, there being no continuous row by which he might escape; but he merely fled higher up and put so many leaves between us that it was difficult to discover him.

When I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared entirely, though I kept the best watch I could, and stood close to the foot of the tree.

They are wonderfully cunning.

The Eupatorium purpureum is early killed by frost and stands now all dry and brown by the sides of other herbs like the goldenrod and tansy, which are quite green and in blossom.
The railroads as much as anything appear to have unsettled the farmers. Our young Concord farmers and their young wives, hearing this bustle about them, seeing the world all going by as it were, — some daily to the cities about their business, some to California, — plainly cannot make up their minds to live the quiet, retired, old-fashioned, country-farmer's life. They are impatient if they live more than a mile from a railroad.

While all their neighbors are rushing to the road, there are few who have character or bravery enough to live off the road. He is too well aware what is going on in the world not to wish to take some part in it. I was reminded of this by meeting S. Tuttle in his wagon.


The pontederia, which apparently makes the mass of the weeds by the side of the river, is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it.

The mist is so thin that it is like haze or smoke in the air, imparting a softness to the landscape.


Sitting by the spruce swamp in Conant's Grove, I am reminded that this is a perfect day to visit the swamps, with its damp, mistling, mildewy air, so solemnly still.  There are the spectre-like black spruces hanging with usnea moss, and in the rear rise the dark green pines and oaks on the hillside, touched here and there with livelier tints where a maple or birch may stand, this so luxuriant vegetation standing heavy, dark, sombre, like mould in a cellar. The peculiar tops of the spruce are seen against this.

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays, who make a great cry about nothing.

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, and the button-bush. The balls of the last appear not half grown this season,-probably on account of the drought, and now they are killed by frost.


This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower (Sarracenia purpurea), better called pitcher-plant.  They ray out around the dry scape and flower, which still remain, resting on rich uneven beds of a coarse reddish moss, through which the small flowered andromeda puts up, presenting altogether a most rich and luxuriant appearance to the eye. 

Though the moss is comparatively dry, I cannot walk without upsetting the numerous pitchers, which are now full of water, and so wetting my feet. I once accidentally sat down on such a bed of pitcher-plants, and found an uncommonly wet seat where I expected a dry one. 

These leaves are of various colors from plain green to a rich striped yellow or deep red. No plants are more richly painted and streaked than the inside of the broad lips of these.  Old Josselyn called this "Hollow-leaved Lavender." No other plant, methinks, that we have is so remarkable and singular.


Here was a large hornets' nest, which when I went to take and first knocked on it to see if anybody was at home, 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, unless because the swamp is warmer. They were all within and not working, however.

I picked up two arrowheads in the field beyond.


What honest, homely, earth-loving, unaspiring houses they used to live in! Take that on Conantum for instance, so low you can put your hand on the eaves behind. There are few whose pride could stoop to enter such a house to-day. And then the broad chimney, built for comfort, not for beauty, with no coping of bricks to catch the eye, no alto or basso relievo.

The mist has now thickened into a fine rain, and I retreat.



H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 28, 1851

The white pines in Hubbard's Grove have now a pretty distinct parti-colored look, — green and yellow mottled.  See September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them. ,")  See also September 29, 1857 ("Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves."); October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast."); October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish."); October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall.") and also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

The pontederia is all dead and brown and has been for some time; the year is over for it. See August 22, 1860 ("Now, when the mikania is conspicuous, the bank is past prime, - for lilies are far gone the pontederia is past prime, willows and button-bushes begin to look the worse for the wear thus early"); September 2, 1859 ("The pontederia leaves are now decidedly brown or brownish"); September 5, 1860 ("The pontederia is extensively crisped and blackened"); September 13, 1859 ("The pontederia spike is now generally turned downward beneath the water"); September 17, 1852 ("The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river."); September 18, 1858 ("I see one pontederia spike rising blue above the surface. Elsewhere the dark withered pontederia leaves show themselves, and at a distance look like ducks,  and so help conceal them."); September 26, 1859 ("The pontederia is fast shedding its seeds of late. . . . Many are long since bare. "); October 16, 1859 ("This may not be an annual phenomenon to you.. . ., but it has an important place in my Kalendar. So surely as the sun appears to be in Libra or Scorpio, I see the conical winter lodges of the musquash rising above the withered pontederia")

I hear the barking of a red squirrel, who is alarmed at something, and a great scolding or ado among the jays.                                                 
The red squirrels scold
and the jays scream while you are
clubbing and shaking trees.
October 11, 1852

See also September 21, 1854 ("I hear many jays since the frosts began.”); September 24, 1857 ("A red squirrel chiding you from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the locality."); September 25, 1851 ("In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native."); September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); September 25, 1857 ("Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels."); October 5, 1857 ("I hear the alarum of a small red squirrel."); December 1, 1857 (" I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos, See September 28, 1856 ("How many fruits are scarlet now! — barberries, prinos, etc."); See also August 20, 1854 ("Prinos berries have begun to redden."); August 23, 1853 ("Barberries have begun to redden, and the prinos, — some of the last quite red."); September 2, 1852 ("The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places.");September 5, 1858 ("To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening."); September 11, 1859 ("The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red."); September 12, 1851 ("The prinos berries are pretty red."); September 21, 1856 ("Prinos berries."); September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered. "); September 25, 1859 ("Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days"); October 10, 1857 ("To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare");  October 23, 1853 ("The prinos is bare, leaving red berries."); November 2, 1853 ("The prinos berries are almost gone."); November 25, 1858 ("The prinos berries on their light-brown twigs are quite abundant and handsome.") and note to October 2, 1856 (“The prinos berries are in their prime.”):

The fresh bright scarlet
prinos berries seen in prime
amid fresh green leaves.
October 2, 1856

This swamp contains beautiful specimens of the sidesaddle-flower. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.")  See also e.g.  June 12, 1852 ("The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially."); September 11, 1851("We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them. Are they ever quite dry? Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation?"); November 11, 1858 (“In the meadows the pitcher-plants are bright-red. ); November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day. 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."); . October 4, 1858 ("Hornets are still at work in their nests") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau. Wasps and Hornets


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Sunday, September 26, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: September 26 (the effect of frost, a harvest of seed, flocking birds, single red maples, warmth and cold, the waning season)


The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852 


Single red maples
bright against the cold green pines
now seen a mile off.

A marsh hawk circles
low along the meadow's edge
looking for a frog.

The waning season –
these are warm serene and bright
autumn afternoons.

Another smart frost
making dry walking amid
the stiffened grass.

And now is the time 
when flocks of sparrows begin
to scour weedy fields.

September 26, 2016

Another smart frost, making dry walking amid the stiffened grass in the morning. September 26, 1858

It is a warm and very pleasant afternoon, and I walk along the riverside. September 26, 1854

The taller grass and sedge, now withered and brown, reveals the little pines in it. September 26, 1860

The spikes of P. Crus-galli also are partially bare. September 26, 1858

I observe that the seeds of the Panicum sanguinale and filiforme are perhaps half fallen, evidently affected by the late frosts. September 26, 1858

Many swamp white oak acorns have turned brown on the trees. September 26, 1854

Acorns have fallen after the rain and wind, just as leaves and fruit. September 26, 1860

Succory in bloom at the Tommy Wheeler house. It bears the frost well, though we have not had much. September 26, 1852

Apparently Hypericum prolificum in Monroe's garden, still out. September 26, 1857 

Solidago rigida, just done, within a rod southwest of the oak. September 26, 1857

The pickerel-weed is brown, and I see musquash-houses. September 26, 1857

The tree fern is in fruit now, with its delicate, tendril-like fruit climbing three or four feet over the asters, goldenrods, etc., on the edge of the swamp. The large ferns are yellow or brown now. September 26, 1852

Dogsbane leaves a clear yellow. September 26, 1852

The Gnaphalium plantaginifolium [mouse-ear] leaves, green above, downy beneath. September 26, 1852

The small cottony leaves of the fragrant everlasting in the fields for some time, protected, as it were, by a little web of cotton against frost and snow, — a little dense web of cotton spun over it, — entangled in it, — as if to restrain it from rising higher. September 26, 1852

Viburnum dentatum berries still hold on. September 26, 1854

The increasing scarlet and yellow tints around the meadows and river remind me of the opening of a vast flower-bud; they are the petals of its corolla, which is of the width of the valleys. It is the flower of autumn, whose expanding bud just begins to blush. September 26, 1852

I see far off the various-colored gowns of cranberry pickers against the green of the meadow. September 26, 1857

Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off. September 26, 1854

Small oaks in hollows (as under Emerson Cliff) have fairly begun to change. September 26, 1860

As yet, however, in the forest there are very few changes of foliage. September 26, 1852

The Polygonum articulatum, giving a rosy tinge to Jenny's Desert and elsewhere, is very interesting now, with its slender dense racemes of rose-tinted flowers, apparently without leaves, rising cleanly out of the sand.  September 26, 1852

Minute rose-tinted flowers that brave the frosts and advance the summer into fall, warming with their color sandy hill sides and deserts, like the glow of evening reflected on the sand. Apparently all flower and no leaf. September 26, 1852

Go up Assabet for fuel. September 26, 1855

It is not in vain, perhaps, that every winter the forest is brought to our doors, shaggy with lichens. Even in so humble a shape as a wood-pile, it contains sermons for us. September 26, 1852

Hearing a sharp phe-phe and again phe-phe-phe, I look round and see two (probably larger) yellow-legs, like pigeons, standing in the water by the bare, flat ammannia shore, their whole forms reflected in the water. They allow me to paddle past them, though on the alert. September 26, 1859

I hear a faint jingle from some sparrows on the willows. September 26, 1854

Larks, like robins, fly in flocks. September 26, 1852

And now is the time, too, when flocks of sparrows begin to scour over the weedy fields, especially in the morning. September 26, 1858

Methinks they are attracted to some extent by this their harvest of panic seed. Evidently the small granivorous birds abound more after these seeds are ripe. September 26, 1858

The seeds of pigweed are yet apparently quite green. Maybe they are somewhat peculiar for hanging on all winter. September 26, 1858

I watch a marsh hawk circling low along the edge of the meadow, looking for a frog. . September 26, 1857

The river stands a little way over the grass again, and the summer is over. September 26, 1857

The river is getting to be too cold for bathing. September 26, 1852

Took my last bath the 24th. Probably shall not bathe again this year. It was chilling cold. September 26 1854

Monday and Tuesday I was coming to Boston and Concord. Aboard the steamer Boston were several droves of sheep and oxen and a great crowd of passengers. September 26-27, 1853

I see now ripe, large (three-inch), very dark chocolate(?)-colored puffballs. Are then my five-fingers puffballs? September 26, 1852

I see, just up, the large light-orange toad-stools with white spots. September 26, 1860

I hear a frog or two, either palusiris or halecina, croak and work faintly, as in spring, along the side of the river. September 26, 1859

So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring. September 26, 1859

Coming home, the sun is intolerably warm on my left cheek. I perceive it is because the heat of the reflected sun, which is as bright as the real one, is added to that of the real one, for when I cover the reflection with my hand the heat is less intense. September 26, 1857

The season is waning. A wasp just looked in upon me. A very warm day for the season. September 26, 1857

These are warm, serene, bright autumn afternoons. September 26, 1857

September 26, 2024
[As yet, however, in the forest there are very few changes of foliage. September 26, 1852]


*****
*****
September 26, 2014
February 10, 1855 ("It is worth the while to let some pigweed grow in your garden, if only to attract these winter visitors. ")
February 13, 1853 ("I am called to window to see a dense flock of snowbirds, on and under the pigweed in the garden. ") 
February 16, 1856 ("The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek")
February 25, 1857 (“The fragrant everlasting has retained its fragrance all winter.”)
February 27, 1859 ("The sky, too, is soft to look at, and the air to feel on my cheek.")
March 30, 1855 ("To-day and yesterday have been bright, windy days. —west wind, cool, yet, compared with the previous colder ones, pleasantly, gratefully cool to me on my cheek.")
April 4, 1852 ("I feel the northwest air cooled by the snow on my cheek.")
April 18, 1855 ("And as I sit on Fair Haven Hill-side, the sun actually burns my cheek;")
June 5, 1853 (“The heavens and the earth are one flower. The earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.”)
July 9, 1851 ("The handsome blue flowers of the succory or endive (Cichorium Intybus).")
July 21, 1853 ("The sun is now warm on my back, and when I turn round I have to shade my face with my hands")
The Maine Woods ("Daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it-rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”)
August 5, 1855 ("Hear a yellow-legs flying over,—phe' phe phe, phe' phe phe.”)
August 6, 1852 ("We live, as it were, within the calyx of a flower.")
August 16, 1856 ("I find the dog's-bane (Apocynum androsoemifolium) bark not the nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum”). Note "Apocynum" means "poisonous to dogs".)
August 21, 1852 (“The leaves of the dogsbane are turning yellow”)
August 27, 1858 ("Robins fly in flocks.")
August 27, 1856 ("Then there are the Viburnum dentatum berries, in flattish cymes, dull lead colored berries, depressed globular, three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, with a mucronation, hard, seedy, dryish, and unpalatable.")
 August 28, 1852 ("The viburnums, dentatum and nudum, are in their prime. The sweet viburnum not yet purple, and the maple-leaved still yellowish. ")
August 29, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture.”)
September 2, 1859 ("The meadows acquire a fresh yellowish green as in the spring. This is another phase of the second spring, of which the peeping of hylas by and by is another.")
September 4, 1858 ("P. sanguinale, crab grass, finger grass, or purple panic grass.")
September 8, 1851 ("Plants commonly soon cease to grow for the year, unless they may have a fall growth, which is a kind of second spring. In the feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and he looks forward to the coming winter.  His occasional rejuvenescence and faith in the current time is like the aftermath, a scanty crop. . . .It is a season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and trivial experiences.  . . . But there is an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again, followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive beauty.  May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of fine and clear, mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting before the winter comes,")
September 10, 1859 ("See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A. M.")
September 11, 1857 ("To my surprise I find, by the black oaks at the sand hole east of Clamshell, the Solidago rigida, apparently in prime or a little past. The heads and rays were so large I thought at first it must be a hieracium.")
September 12, 1858 ("The Panicum filiforme is very abundant ... and, seen in the right light, where they stand thick, they give a purple gleam to the field.")\
September 13, 1858 ("There is a man there mowing the Panicum Crus-galli, which is exceedingly rank and dense.")
September 14, 1852 ("The grass is very green after the rains, like a second spring,")
September 14, 1854 ("A flock of thirteen tell tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sail in a flock. . .to alight in a more distant place.”)
September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”)
September 17, 1858 ("Methinks, too, that there are more sparrows in flocks now about in garden,")
September 18, 1852 ("The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener.")
September 19, 1854 ("I see large flocks of robins keeping up their familiar peeping and chirping.")
September 20, 1855 ("See larks in flocks on meadow.")
September 21, 1854 ("The first frost in our yard last night, the grass white and stiff in the morning.")
September 23, 1851 ("I notice new cabins of the muskrats in solitary swamps.")
September 23, 1851 ("I scare up large flocks of sparrows in the garden.")
 September 24, 1851 ("I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. It is a far brighter red than the blossoms of any tree in summer and more conspicuous.")
September 24, 1854 ("It is now too cold to bathe with comfort. ")
September 24, 1854 ("The muskrats make haste now to rear their cabins and conceal themselves.")
September 24, 1855 ("Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus")
September 25, 1851 (" To bathe in Hubbard's meadow . . . I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over.  ")
September 25. 1857 (Brought home my first boat-load of wood.")
September 25, 1857 ("The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun.. . .A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar. . . .The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar. ")
September 25, 1855 ("A very fine and warm afternoon after a cloudy morning. . . . See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows ")
September 25, 1857 ("I hear some birds in the maples across the river utter a peculiar note of alarm . . .and see them seeking a covert. Looking round, I see a marsh hawk beating the bushes on that side")
September 25, 1858 ("Melvin says . . . that he sometimes sees the larger yellow-legs here.")
September 25, 1859 (" The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered. . . and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. ") 
 
Pleasant afternoon
walk along the riverside –
sparrow's faint jingle. 
September 26, 1854

September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over”)
September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water.")
September 27, 1857 ("At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum.")
 September 27, 1858 ("  Red maples now fairly glow along the shore . They vary from yellow to a peculiar crimson which is more red than common crimson.")
September 27, 1858 ("What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns?”)
September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring.")
October 1, 1860 (“Remarkable frost and ice this morning; quite a wintry prospect. The leaves of trees stiff and white..”)
October 1, 1858 ("See larks in small flocks.")
October 2, 1851  ("At the Cliffs, I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks, just as they endeavored to do at my house in the woods.")
October 2, 1858 ("The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings.")
October 2, 1858 ("A large chocolate-colored puffball “smokes.”")
October 2, 1856 ("Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there")
October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd")
October 3, 1860 ("I have seen and heard sparrows in flocks, more as if flitting by, within a week, or since the frosts began.")
October 4, 1853  ("The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost.")
October 5, 1858 (“I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard.”);
October 10, 1853 ("There are . . . large flocks of small sparrows, which make a business of washing and pruning themselves in the puddles in the road, as if cleaning up after a long flight and the wind of yesterday.”)
October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.")
October 11, 1859 ("There was a very severe frost this morning (ground stiffened)")
October 13, 1855 ("Larks in flocks in the meadows, showing the white in their tails as they fly, sing sweetly as in spring.")
October 14, 1856 ("Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, . . .etc., etc.")
October 15, 1851 (" The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. Some, it is true, are still rising. They line the river all the way. ") 
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, 1859 ("I see the new musquash-houses erected, conspicuous on the now nearly leafless shores")
October 17, 1859 ("A smart frost this morning. Ground stiffened.")
October 20, 1859 ("Scare up a yellow-legs, apparently the larger, on the shore of Walden. It goes off with a sharp phe phe, phe phe.")
October 21, 1857 ("I become a connoisseur in wood at last, take only the best.")
 October 22, 1851 ("The fragrant life everlasting is still fresh")
October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time, and the faint warbling of their spring notes by many birds.")

The flowers bloom and 
the birds warble their spring notes
like a second spring.

November 1, 1858 ("A man dwells in his native valley like a corolla in its calyx.")
November 8, 1851 (" Like Viola pedata, I shall be ready to bloom again here in my Indian summer days. ")
November 16, 1852 ("Muskrat-houses completed. Interesting objects looking down a river-reach at this season, and our river should not be represented without one or two of these cones. They are . . .of too much importance to be omitted in the river landscape.")
January 2, 1856 ("I see, near the back road and railroad, a small flock of eight snow buntings feeding on the the seeds of the pigweed.")



September 26, 2017
[These are warm, serene, bright autumn afternoons. September 26, 1857]
If you make the least correct 
observation of nature this year,
 you will have occasion to repeat it
 with illustrations the next, 
and the season and life itself is prolonged.


A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 26
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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What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men?


September 26.

Since I perambulated the bounds of the town, I find that I have in some degree confined myself, - - my vision and my walks.

On whatever side I look off I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-lived men? No scenery will redeem it.

What can be more beautiful than any scenery inhabited by heroes? Any landscape would be glorious to me, if I were assured that its sky was arched over a single hero.

Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country as men of a similar character.

It is a charmed circle which I have drawn around my abode, having walked not with God but with the devil.

I am too well aware when I have crossed this line.

Most New England biographies and journals John Adams's not excepted affect me like opening of the tombs.

The prudent and seasonable farmers are already plowing against another year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 26, 1851

The mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met  See September 12, 1851 (" On Monday, the 15th instant, I am going to perambulate the bounds of the town. ...It is a sort of reconnoissance of its frontiers authorized by the central government of the town, which will bring the surveyor in contact with whatever wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces."); September 15, 1851 ("Commenced perambulating the town bounds."); September 16, 1851 ("The inhabitants of Lincoln yield sooner than usual to the influence of the rising generation, and are a mixture of rather simple but clever with a well-informed and trustworthy people."); September 17, 1851 ("Perambulated the Lincoln line."); September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line."); September 19, 1851 (Perambulated the Carlisle line"); September 20, 1851 ("A fatal coarseness is the result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men.. . . I feel inexpressibly begrimed.")

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Saturday, September 25, 2021

A Book of the Seasons: September 25 (changing colors, reds and sober browns, a single red maple, berries, fall flowers and birds, bathing ends)

 





The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852


I am detained by
the bright red blackberry leaves
strewn along the sod.

Holding a white pine
needle, turning it in a
favorable light –

I see each of its
edges notched or serrated
with minute bristles.

At a distance a
fox or an otter withdraws
from the riverside.


September 25, 2020

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. September 25, 1858

The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered, probably by the frosts. . . and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. September 25, 1859

The same frosts that kill and whiten the corn whiten many grasses thus. September 25, 1859

The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come.  September 25, 1851

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct.  September 25, 1851

A very fine and warm afternoon after a cloudy morning. Carry Aunt and Sophia a-barberrying to Conantum. September 25, 1855

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.September 25, 1858

The button-bush leaves are rapidly falling and covering the ground with a rich brown carpet.  September 25, 1854

I am detained by the very bright red blackberry leaves strewn along the sod, the vine being inconspicuous.  September 25, 1854

At a distance a fox or an otter withdraws from the riverside. September 25, 1854

The river has risen again considerably (this I believe the fourth time), owing to the late copious rains . . .  It had not got down before this last rain but to within some eighteen inches, at least, of the usual level in September. September 25, 1856

At 2 p. m. the river is sixteen and three quarters inches above my hub [?] by boat. September 25, 1859

To bathe in Hubbard's meadow . . . I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over.  September 25, 1851 

On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed.  September 25, 1854

The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun  . . .  such brilliant red on green. September 25, 1857

A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar. The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence. September 25, 1857

There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. September 25, 1858

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed. September 25, 1852

Dogwood (Rhus venenata) is yet but pale-scarlet or yellowish. The R. glabra is more generally turned. September 25, 1857

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red. September 25, 1852 

Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days. September 25, 1859

The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome. September 25, 1856

Some of the Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line between Tarbell and T. Wheeler beyond brook are smaller, stale, and not good at all. September 25, 1856

The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? September 25, 1858

We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes, but I fill my fingers with prickles to pay for them. . . . Some bushes bear much larger and plumper berries than others. Some also are comparatively green yet. September 25, 1855

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. September 25, 1859

I remember that brakes had begun to decay as much as six weeks ago. September 25, 1857

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white.September 25, 1859

Also some dicksonia is about equally white. September 25, 1859

In shade is the laboratory of white. Color is produced in the sun. September 25, 1859

The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown there. The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. September 25, 1859

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river. September 25, 1852

Ranunculus reptans still. September 25, 1852

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. September 25, 1858

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. September 25, 1852

Nabalus albus still common, though much past prime. Though concealed amid trees, I find three humble-bees on one. September 25, 1859

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets.  September 25, 1851

Examined the hornets ' nest near Hubbard's Grove , suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes  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 25, 1851

You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank. September 25, 1857

Do I see an F. hyemalis in the Deep Cut? It is a month earlier than last year. September 25, 1854

A golden-crowned thrush runs off, a few feet at a time, on hillside on Harrington road, as if she had a nest still! September 25, 1856

See where the moles have been working in Conant’s meadow,—heaps of fresh meadow mould some eight inches in diameter on the green surface, and now a little hoary. September 25, 1855

Moles work in meadows. September 25, 1859

Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates. September 25, 1855

Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels. One sits high on a hemlock bough with a nut in its paws. September 25, 1857

Suddenly he dodges behind the trunk of the tree, and I hear some birds in the maples across the river utter a peculiar note of alarm. September 25, 1857


I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky  September 25, 1851

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milkweed.  September 25, 1851

See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows and another, or a hen-hawk, sailing on high. September 25, 1855

Looking round, I see a marsh hawk beating the bushes on that side. September 25, 1857

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. September 25, 1858

Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side, and the scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side. September 25, 1855

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions.  September 25, 1851

Holding a white pine needle in my hand, and turning it in a favorable light, as I sit upon this cliff, I perceive that each of its three edges is notched or serrated with minute forward-pointing bristles. September 25, 1859

As I came round the island, I took notice of that little ash tree . . . seven small branches have shot up from its circumference, all together forming a perfectly regular oval head. September 25, 1857

That the tree thus has its idea to be lived up to, and, as it were, fills an invisible mould in the air. September 25, 1857

Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon. September 25, 1860

Brought home my first boat-load of wood. September 25, 1857

When returning, about 4.30 P. M., we observe a slight mistiness, a sea-turn advancing from the east, and soon after felt the raw east wind . . . Aunt thought she could smell the salt marsh in it. September 25, 1855

There is a splendid sunset while I am on the water . . . All the colors are prolonged in the rippled reflection to five or six times their proper length. The effect is particularly remarkable in the case of the reds, which are long bands of red perpendicular in the water.  September 25, 1854

At home, after sundown, I observe a long, low, and uniformly level slate-colored cloud reaching from north to south throughout the western horizon, which I suppose to be the sea-turn further inland, for we no longer felt the east wind here. September 25, 1855

Bats come out fifteen minutes after sunset, and then I hear some clear song sparrow strains, as from a fence-post amid snows in early spring. September 25, 1854

September 25, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Oven-bird
A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

*****

September 25, 2019

February 12, 1859 ("You may account for that ash by the Rock having such a balanced and regular outline by the fact that in an open place their branches are equally drawn toward the light on all sides, and not because of a mutual understanding through the trunk.")
March 16, 1855 ("At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn”)
June 10, 1856 ("The Crataegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom”)
June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th, . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”)
June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”)
June 18, 1854 ("Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been”)
July 8, 1856 ("Ranunculus reptans is abundantly out at mouth of brook, Baker shore.")
July 17, 1857 ("Aspidium Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filix-foemina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited")
July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?).")
August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the . . . oven-bird, etc . cease?”)
August 10, 1853 (“The Ranunculus repens numerously out about Britton's Spring.”)
August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")
August 23, 1858 ("I see a golden-crowned thrush, but it is silent except a chip; sitting low on a twig near the main stem of a tree, in these deep woods ")
August 24, 1856 ("The river meadows probably will not be mown this year. I can hardly get under the stone bridge without striking my boat.”)
August 29, 1858 ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.")
August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”)
August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp")
August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.")
September 1, 1858 ("Ranunculus repens in bloom — as if begun again ? — at the violet wood-sorrel spring")
September 3, 1857 ("A slate-colored snowbird back.")
September 4, 1854 ("Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.")
September 4, 1859 ("Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now. . .and on them all you are pretty sure to see one or two humblebees")
September 8, 1853 ("Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp, with Viola pedata.")
September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime.")
September 19, 1858 ("Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately.")
September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass")
September 21, 1854 ("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")
September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.")
September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year.")
September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen.")
September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") 
September 22, 1859 ("I see the fall dandelions all closed in the rain this afternoon. Do they, then, open only in fair or cloudy forenoons and cloudy afternoons? ")
September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower.")
September 23, 1857 ("Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint's Pond road in the woods....”)
September 24, 1851 ("The other evening (22d), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look")
September 24, 1855 ("Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus")
September 24, 1859 ("The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown.")
September 24, 1854 ("It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.")

I watch the milkweed
rising higher and higher
till lost in the sky. 

A splendid sunset,
all its colors prolonged in
rippled reflection.

September 26, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing.")
September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off.")
September 26, 1855 (Go up Assabet for fuel")
September 26, 1857 ("I watch a marsh hawk circling low along the edge of the meadow, looking for a frog, and now at last it alights to rest on a tussock. ")
September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water.")
September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever.")
September 28, 1851 ("The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. ")
September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again")
September 29, 1854 (" I  hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them.")
What astronomer
can calculate the orbit 
of my thistle-down?
September 30, 1854 ("The song sparrow is still about, and the blackbird.")
October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint.")
October 8, 1855 (" Hear a song sparrow sing.")
October 15, 1859 ("See a Fringilla hyemalis")
October 22, 1855 ("Some F. hyemalis and other sparrows, are actively flitting about amid the alders and dogwood")
October 23, 1853 ("The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank. . . in large, dense masses, two or three feet high, pale purple or whitish, and covered with humble bees")
October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum.. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”)
October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case.");
November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")
November 25, 1857 ("I see a fox run across the road in the twilight")

September 25, 2017

If you make the least correct 
observation of nature this year,
 you will have occasion to repeat it
 with illustrations the next, 
and the season and life itself is prolonged.


A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 25
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 © 2009-2022


https://tinyurl.com/HDT25September 

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