I cannot excuse myself for using the stone.

October 23

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. 

The streets are strewn with buttonwood leaves, which rustle under your feet, and the children are busy raking them into heaps, some for bonfires. 

The large elms are bare; not yet the buttonwoods. 

The sugar maples on the Common stand dense masses of rich yellow leaves with a deep scarlet blush,—far more than blush. They are remarkably brilliant this year on the exposed surfaces. The last are as handsome as any trees in the street. 

I am struck with the handsome form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plaited from the midrib. 

I plucked three leaves from the end of a red maple shoot, an underwood, each successively smaller than the last, the brightest and clearest scarlet that I ever saw. These and the birch attracted universal admiration when laid on a sheet of white paper and passed round the supper table, and several inquired particularly where I found them. I never saw such colors painted. They were without spot; ripe leaves.

The small willows two or three feet high by the road side in woods have some rich, deep chrome-yellow leaves with a gloss. The sprouts are later to ripen and richer-colored. 

The pale whitish leaves (I horehound in damp grassy paths, with its spicy fruit in the axils, are tinged with purple or lake more or less. - 

Going through what was E. Hosmer’s muck-hole pond, now almost entirely dry, the surface towards the shore is covered with a dry crust more or less cracked, which crackles under my feet. I strip it up like bark in long pieces, three quarters of an inch thick and a foot wide and two long. It appears to be composed of fine mosses and perhaps utricularia and the like, such as grow in water. A little sphagnum is quite conspicuous, erect but dry, in it. 

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. 

But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone. It is not innocent, it is not just, so to maltreat the tree that feeds us. I am not disturbed by considering that if I thus shorten its life I shall not enjoy its fruit so long, but am prompted to a more innocent course by motives purely of humanity. I sympathize with the tree, yet I heaved a big stone against the trunks like a robber,—not too good to commit murder. I trust that I shall never do it again.

These gifts should be accepted, not merely with gentleness, but with a certain humble gratitude. The tree whose fruit we would obtain should not be too rudely shaken even. It is not a time of distress, when a little haste and violence even might be pardoned. It is worse than boorish, it is criminal to inflict an unnecessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. 

Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others. The thought that I was robbing myself by injuring the tree did not occur to me, but I was affected as if I had cast a rock at a sentient being, — with a duller sense than my own, it is true, but yet a distant relation. 

Behold a man cutting down a tree to come at the fruit! What is the moral of such an act? 

Faded white ferns now at Saw Mill Brook. They press yellow or straw-color.

Ah! we begin old men in crime. Would that we might grow innocent at last as the children of light! 

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t.

Is that tall weed in Mrs. Brooks’s yard Cacalia suaveolens?? Yet stem more angled than grooved; four or five feet high. Some time ago. 

Cousin Charles writes that his horse drew 5286 pounds up the hill from Hale’s factory, at Cattle-Show in Haverhill the other day.

H. D. Thorerau, Journal,  October 23, 1855

Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. See  October 11, 1852 ("The jays scream, and the red squirrels scold, while you are clubbing and shaking the trees."); October 22, 1857 ("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts.");   October 24, 1857 ("I hear the dull thump of heavy stones against the trees from far through the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for nuts.")

A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, t t t t t. See October 23, 1853 ("I see a downy woodpecker tapping an apple tree, and hear, when I have passed, his sharp, metallic note."); 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?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Downy Woodpecker

All sorts of men come to Cattle-Show.

September 29. 

September 29, 2017

All sorts of men come to Cattle-Show. I see one with a blue hat. 

I hear that some have gathered fringed gentian. 

Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1857

Pines have begun to be parti-colored with yellow leaves.  See September 28, 1854 ("R. W. E.’s pines are parti-colored, preparing to fall, some of them.”): October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

Some have gathered fringed gentian.See  October 18, 1857 ("The fringed gentian closes every night and opens every morning in my pitcher.”); October 19, 1852 ("At 5 p. m. I found the fringed gentian now some what stale and touched by frost, being in the meadow toward Peter's. (Gentiana crinita in September, Bigelow and Gray.) ...  They are now, at 8 a. m., opening a little in a pitcher. It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, however rare.. . .It is a very singular and agreeable surprise to come upon this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower at this season, when flowers have passed out of our minds and memories; the latest of all to begin to bloom.”) See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, The Fringed Gentian

Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year.

September 30

Cattle-Show. 

An overcast, mizzling, and rainy day. 

Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived some where in this county, who, he remembers, called out the whole division once or twice to a muster. He sold the army under him to the English in the last war, — though General Miller of Lincoln besought to let him lead them, — and never was happy after it, had no peace of mind. It was said that his life was in danger here in consequence of his treason. 

Once, at a muster in front of the Hayden house, when there was a sham fight, and an Indian party took a circuit round a piece of wood, some put green grapes into their guns, and he, hearing one whistle by his head, thought some one wished to shoot him and ordered them to disperse, — dismissed them. 

Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year, Minott said that the little they had got since the last flood before this was good for nothing, would only poison the cattle, being covered with the dried slime and filth of the freshet. When you mowed it there arose a great dust. He spoke of this grass, thus left over winter to next year, as "old fog." 

Said that Clark (Daniel or Brooks) asked him the other day what made so many young alders and birches and willows spring up in the river meadows of late years; it didn't use to be so forty or fifty years ago; and he told him that in old times, when they were accustomed to take something strong to drink, they didn't stand for such shrubs but mowed all clear as they went, but now, not feeling so much energy for want of the stimulant, when they came to a bush, though no bigger than a pipe-stem, they mowed all round it and left it standing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 30, 1856

Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived some where in this county. [William Hull ( 1753-1825) moved to his wife's family estate in Newton after the Revolution and served as a judge and state senator until Jefferson appointed him Governor of the Michigan where he surrendered Fort Detroit to the British on August 16, 1812.]

Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year. See August 1, 1856 (“Unfortunate those who have not got their hay. I see them wading in overflowed meadows and pitching the black and mouldy swaths about in vain that they may dry."); August 22, 1856 (“I see much hay floating, and two or three cocks, quite black, carried round and round in a great eddy by the side of the stream,");  August 30, 1856 ("Rain again in the night, as well as most of yesterday  raising the river a second time. They say there has not been such a year as this for more than half a century."); September 25, 1856 ("The river has risen again considerably (this I believe the fourth time) . . . before the farmers have succeeded in their late attempt to get their meadow-hay."); October 4, 1856 ("I hear that a Captain Hurd  of Wayland or Sudbury, estimates the loss of river meadow-hay this season in those two towns on account of the freshet at twelve hundred tons.")

What made so many young alders and birches and willows spring up in the river meadows of late years. See August 25, 1856 ("Why do maples, alders, etc., at present border the stream, though they do not spring up to any extent in the open meadow?"); August 3, 1856 ("In a meadow now being mown I see that the ferns and small osiers are as thick as the grass. If modern farmers do not collect elm and other leaves for their cattle, they do thus mow and cure the willows, etc., etc., to a considerable extent, so that they come to large bushes or trees only on the edge of the meadow.")

 Minott said the hay

they got in since the last flood

was good for nothing.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Speaking of the meadow-hay 

 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 ©  2009-2026

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-560930

At the Cattle Show

September 20.

Cattle-Show.

Rainy in forenoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1860


At the Cattle Show Thoreau delivered a lecture, the The Succession of Forest Trees
~~Zphx

Apple time

September 28

At Cattle-Show today I noticed that the ladies' apple (small, one side green, the other red, glossy) and maiden's-blush (good size, yellowish-white with a pink blush) were among the handsomest.

The pumpkin-sweet one of the largest exhibited. The ram's horn was a handsome uniformly very dark purple or crimson. 

The white pine seed is very abundant this year, and this must attract more pigeons. Coombs tells me that he finds the seed in their crops. Also that he found with in a day or two a full-formed egg with shell in one. 

In proportion as a man has a poor ear for music, or loses his ear for it, he is obliged to go far for it or fetch it from far, and pay a great price for such as he can hear. Operas, ballet-singers, and the like only affect him. It is like the difference between a young and healthy appetite and the appetite of an epicure, between a sweet crust and a mock-turtle soup.

As the lion is said to lie in a thicket or in tall reeds and grass by day, slumbering, and sallies at night, just so with the cat. She will ensconce herself for the day in the grass or weeds in some out-of-the-way nook near the house, and arouse herself toward night.


H.D. Thoreau, Journal September 28, 1859

September 28.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 28

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Scarlet berry season.

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