September 10
As I watch the groves on the meadow opposite our house, I see how differently they look at different hours of the day, i. e. in different lights, when the sun shines on them variously. In the morning, perchance, they seem one blended mass of light green. In the afternoon, distinct trees appear, separated by heavy shadows, and in some places I can see quite through the grove.
3 P M. - To the Cliffs and the Grape Cliff beyond.
Hardhack and meadow-sweet are now all dry.
I see the smoke of burning brush in the west horizon this dry and sultry afternoon, and wish to look off from some hill. It is a kind of work the farmer cannot do without discovery. Sometimes I smell these smokes several miles off, and by the odor know it is not a burning building, but withered leaves and the rubbish of the woods and swamp.
As I go through the woods, I see that the ferns have turned brown and give the woods an autumnal look.
The boiling spring is almost completely dry. Nothing flows (I mean without the shed), but there are many hornets and yellow wasps apparently buzzing and circling about in jealousy of one another, either drinking the stagnant water, which is the most accessible this dry parching day, or it may be collecting something from the slime, - I think the former.
As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I see some signs of the approaching fall of the white pine. On some trees the old leaves are already somewhat reddish, though not enough to give the trees a parti-colored look, and they come off easily on being touched, - the old leaves on the lower part of the twigs.
Some farmers are sowing their winter rye? I see the fields smoothly rolled. (I hear the locust still.) I see others plowing steep rocky and bushy fields, apparently for the same purpose.
How beautiful the sproutland (burnt plain) seen from the Cliff! No more cheering and inspiring sight than a young wood springing up thus over a large tract, when you look down on it, the light green of the maples shaded off into the darker oaks, and here and there a maple blushes quite red, enlivening the scene yet more.
Surely this earth is fit to be inhabited, and many enterprises may be undertaken with hope where so many young plants are pushing up.
In the spring I burned over a hundred acres till the earth was sere and black, and by midsummer this space was clad in a fresher and more luxuriant green than the surrounding even.
Shall man then despair? Is he not a sprout-land too, after never so many searings and witherings? If you witness growth and luxuriance, it is all the same as if you grew luxuriantly.
I see three smokes in Stow. One sends up dark volumes of wreathed smoke, as if from the mouth of Erebus. It is remarkable what effects so thin and subtile a substance as smoke produces, even at a distance, -- dark and heavy and powerful as rocks at a distance.
The woodbine is red on the rocks.
The poke is a very rich and striking plant. Some which stand under the Cliffs quite dazzled me with their now purple stems gracefully drooping each way, their rich, somewhat yellowish, purple-veined leaves, their bright purple racemes, -- peduncles, and pedicels, and calyx-like petals from which the birds have picked the berries (these racemes, with their petals now turned to purple, are more brilliant than anything of the kind), -- flower-buds, flowers, ripe berries and dark purple ones, and calyx-like petals which have lost their fruit, all on the same plant.
I love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the richest color. I love to press these berries between my fingers and see their rich purple wine staining my hand. It asks a bright sun on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be seen at this season of the year. It speaks to my blood.
Every part of it is flower, such is its superfluity of color, -- a feast of color. That is the richest flower which most abounds in color. What need to taste the fruit, to drink the wine, to him who can thus taste and drink with his eyes? Its boughs, gracefully drooping, offering repasts to the birds. It is cardinal in its rank, as in its color.
Nature here is full of blood and heat and luxuriance. What a triumph it appears in Nature to have produced and perfected such a plant, -- as if this were enough for a summer.
The downy seeds of the groundsel are taking their flight here. The calyx has dismissed them and quite curled back, having done its part.
Lespedeza sessiliflora, or reticulated lespedeza on the Cliffs now out of bloom.
At the Grape Cliff, the few bright-red leaves of the tupelo contrast with the polished green ones. The tupelos with drooping branches.
The grape-vines overrunning and bending down the maples form little arching bowers over the meadow, five or six feet in diameter, like parasols held over the ladies of the harem, in the East.
Cuscuta Americana, or dodder, in blossom still.
The Desmodium paniculatum of De Candolle and Gray (Hedysarum paniculatum of Linnaeus and Bigelow), tick-trefoil, with still one blossom, by the path-side up from the meadow. The rhomboidal joints of its loments adhere to my clothes. One of an interesting family that thus disperse themselves.
The oak-ball of dirty drab now.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1851
How differently they look at different hours of the day. See February 5, 1852 ("The trunks and branches of the trees are of different colors at different times and in different lights and weathers, - in sun, rain, and in the night.”); February 9, 1852 ("Objects do not twice present exactly the same appearance. The air changes from hour to hour of every day. It paints and glasses everything. It is a new glass placed over the picture every hour")
As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I see some signs of the approaching fall of the white pine. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall
As I go through the woods, I see that the ferns have turned brown and give the woods an autumnal look. September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered); September 12, 1858("Coming to some shady meadow’s edge, you find that the cinnamon fern has suddenly turned this rich yellow. Thus each plant surely acts its part, and lends its effect to the general impression.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern
The grape-vines overrunning and bending down the maples form little arching bowers over the meadow. See September 8, 1854 (" Sometimes I crawl under low and thick bowers, where they have run over the alders only four or five feet high, and see the grapes hanging from a hollow hemisphere of leaves over my head. At other times I see them dark-purple or black against the silvery undersides of the leaves, high overhead where they have run over birches or maples, and either climb or pull them down to pluck them.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape
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