A Book of the Seasons: September 17: (cooler weather, wild grapes, bees and butterflies, each plant has its turn, what me hurry?)

 

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 

September 17.

I am glad to sit

in the sun on the east side

of the house mornings –

Cooler weather now

for two or three days.

Methinks, too, that there

are more sparrows in flocks now

about in garden.

September 17, 1858

September 17, 2016

Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings. September 17, 1858

Methinks, too, that there are more sparrows in flocks now about in garden, etc.  September 17, 1858

River rising fast, from yesterday’s rain. September 17, 1858

Perambulated the Lincoln line. September 17, 1851

Came upon a nighthawk on the ground in Thrush Alley. September 17, 1852

What produces this flashing air of autumn? — a brightness as if there were not green enough to absorb the light, now that the first frosts wither the herbs.   September 17, 1852

The corn-stalks are stacked like muskets along the fields.  September 17, 1852

I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole. Are they returning south?   September 17, 1852

I see several apple trees that were blown down yesterday and some pretty large elm limbs. September 17, 1858

The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite  green.   September 17, 1858

Is it the alder locust that rings so loud in low land now?  September 17, 1852

The umbel-shaped smilax berry clusters are now ripe.  September 17, 1852

Abundance of wild grapes.   September 17, 1852

Still the oxalis blows, and yellow butterflies are on the flowers.   September 17, 1852

Paddle round Beaver Pond . . . now more inaccessible than usual on account of the rain and high water. A singularly muddy hole.  September 17, 1858

See a flock of eight or ten wood ducks on the Grindstone Meadow, with glass, some twenty-five rods off, — several drakes very handsome.  September 17, 1860

At last one sails off

 calling the others by 

a short creaking note. 

 September 17, 1860

Was it the small rough sunflower which I saw this morning at the brook near Lee's Bridge? September 17, 1851

Saw at James Baker's a buttonwood tree with a swarm of bees now three years in it, but honey and all inaccessible. September 17, 1851

One of those great puffballs, three inches in diameter, ripe.   September 17, 1857

Swamp all dry now; could not wash my hands.  September 17, 1851

The pontederia leaves are sere and brown along the river.  September 17, 1852

The yellow lily pads are apparently decayed generally; as I wade, I tread on their great roots only; and the white lily pads are thinned.  September 17, 1852

See elecampane, quite out of bloom. September 17, 1858

Also the Solidago odora, which I see has just done. September 17, 1858

The fall is further advanced in the water, as the spring was earlier there. I should say that the vegetation of the river was a month further advanced in its decay than of the land generally.  September 17, 1852

I go to Fair Haven Hill, looking at the varieties of nabalus, which have a singular prominence now in all woods and roadsides.  September 17, 1857

How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone.  September 17, 1857

Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the least deed? September 17, 1839  

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The bud swells imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. September 17, 1839 

The wise man is restful, never restless or impatient. He each moment abides there where he is, as some walkers actually rest the whole body at each step.  September 17, 1839  

September 17, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The Downy Woodpecker

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Wood Sorrel (Oxalis)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Nighthawk

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Bees

*****

April 24, 1859 ("Man's moods and thoughts revolve just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s.")

July 19, 1851 (" Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where is the summer then? Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those of nature; I am differently timed. Here I am thirty-four years old, and yet my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much is in the germ! I may say I am unborn. If my curve is large, why bend it to a smaller circle? If life is a waiting, so be it. I am contented. Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no haste for that. Let a man step to the music which he hears, however measured.”)

July 19, 1851 ("This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me, why should it hurry me?")

July 29, 1853 (“The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn.”)

August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats”);
August 13, 1858 ("H. divaricatus was abundantly out on the 11th.");
August 13, 1856 (". Is there not now a prevalence of aromatic herbs in prime? — The polygala roots, blue-curls, wormwood, pennyroyal, Solidago odora, rough sunflowers, horse-mint, etc., etc. Does not the season require this tonic? ")

August 14, 1856 ("Solidago odora abundantly out.")

 August 15, 1851 ("Oxalis stricta, upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow ternate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields. ")

August 19, 1851("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”)

August 19, 1851 ("Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond")

August 19, 1851 ("The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.")
August 30, 1853 ("The Solidago odora grows abundantly behind the Minott house in Lincoln. I collect a large bundle of it.")

September 2, 1856 ("Also, a short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here.")

September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun.")

September 10, 1860 ("Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day,")

September 13, 1852 (“How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! . . . The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay.”)

September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime.”)

September 13, 1858 ("Many yellow butterflies in road and fields all the country over.”) 
September 14,1851("The corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.")

The corn-stalks standing

in stacks in long rows along

edges of corn-fields.

September 14,1851

September 15, 1851 ("Commenced perambulating the town bounds")
Septembeer 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.")

 Each plant has its turn! –

as if the seasons revolve 

for it alone.

.September 17, 1857 

September 18, 1851 ("Perambulated Bedford line.")

September 18, 1858 ("Finding grapes, we proceeded to pluck them, tempted more by their fragrance and color than their flavor, though some were very palatable. We gathered many without getting out of the boat. . .  Thus laden, the evening air wafting the fragrance of the cargo back to us, we paddled homeward. ")

September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)
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.”), and note to

October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.")

December 2, 1850 ("The woodpeckers' holes in the apple trees are about a fifth of an inch deep or just through the bark and half an inch apart. ")

December 5, 1853 ("See and hear a downy woodpecker on an apple tree. Have not many winter birds, like this and the chickadee, a sharp note like tinkling glass or icicles?")

December 14, 1855 ("I heard the sound of a downy woodpecker tapping . . . Frequently, when I pause to listen, I hear this sound in the orchards or streets.")

December 21, 1855 ( "Going to the post-office at 9 A. M. this very pleasant morning, . . . scare a downy woodpecker and a brown creeper in company")

December 30, 1855 ("See one downy woodpecker and one or two chickadees.")

January 5, 1860 ("I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice.")

January 20, 1856 ("A downy woodpecker without red on head the only bird seen in this walk.”)

September 17, 2022

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.

  April 7, 1853 

September 16 <<<<<<<<<   September 17 >>> >>>>>  September 18

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 17 

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

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