To observe the sun set.

July 23

July 23, 2015 

As the light in the west fades, the sky there,

 seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. 

P. M. – To Annursnack.

Herbage is drying up; even weeds are wilted, and the corn rolls.

Agriculture is a good school in which to drill a man. Successful farming admits of no idling.

Now is the haying season.

How active must these men be, all the country over, that they may get through their work in season! A few spoiled windrows, all black and musty, have taught them that they must make hay while the sun shines, and get it in before it rains.

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road.

Pycnanthemum muticum, mountain mint. Have I not mistaken this for the other species heretofore? 

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now, long before the rum cherry.

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia.

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. [Cirsium pumilum.]

Chenopodium hybridum, maple-leaved goose-foot.

What is that white hairy plant with lanceolate leaves and racemes now, with flat burs, one to three, and a long spine in the midst, and five ovate calyx-leaves left (these turned to one side of the peduncle), burs very adhesive, close to road in meadow just beyond stone bridge on right; long out of bloom? 

Every man says his dog will not touch you. Look out, nevertheless.

Twenty minutes after seven, I sit at my window to observe the sun set.

The lower clouds in the north and southwest grow gradually darker as the sun goes down, since we now see the side opposite to the sun, but those high overhead, whose under sides we see reflecting the day, are light.

The small clouds low in the western sky were at first dark also, but, as the sun descends, they are lit up and aglow all but their cores.

Those in the east, though we see their sunward sides, are a dark blue, presaging night, only the highest faintly glowing.

A roseate redness, clear as amber, suffuses the low western sky about the sun, in which the small clouds are mostly melted, only their golden edges still revealed.

The atmosphere there is like some kinds of wine, perchance, or molten cinnabar, if that is red, in which also all kinds of pearls and precious stones are melted.

Clouds generally near the horizon, except near the sun, are now a dark blue.

(The sun sets.) It is half past seven.

The roseate glow deepens to purple.

The low western sky is now, and has been for some minutes, a splendid map, where the fancy can trace islands, continents, and cities beyond compare.

The glow forsakes the high eastern clouds; the uppermost clouds in the west now darken, the glow having forsaken them too; they become a dark blue, and anon their undersides reflect a deep red, like heavy damask curtains, after they had already been dark.

The general redness gradually fades into a pale reddish tinge in the horizon, with a clear white light above it, in which the clouds grow more conspicuous and darker and darker blue, appearing to follow in the wake of the sun, and it is now a quarter to eight, or fifteen minutes after sunset, twenty-five minutes from the first.

A quarter of an hour later, or half an hour after sunset, the white light grows cream colored above the increasing horizon redness, passing through white into blue above.

The western clouds, high and low, are now dark fuscous, not dark blue, but the eastern clouds are not so dark as the western.

Now, about twenty minutes after the first glow left the clouds above the sun's place, there is a second faint fuscous or warm brown glow on the edges of the dark clouds there, sudden and distinct, and it fades again, and it is early starlight, but the tops of the eastern clouds still are white, reflecting the day.

The cream color grows more yellowish or amber.

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest, i. e. a general atmospheric redness close to the west horizon.

There is more of it, after all, than I expected, for the day has been clear and rather cool, and the evening red is what was the blue haze by day.

The moon, now in her first quarter, now begins to preside, — her light to prevail, — though for the most part eclipsed by clouds.

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1852

Now is the haying season. See August 5, 1854 ("We are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Haymaking

Much that I had taken to be the lanceolate loosestrife is the heart-leaved, especially by the Corner road. See July 22, 1852 ("Is not that the Lysimachia ciliata, or hairy-stalked loosestrife, by the Corner road, not the lanceolata?"); July 24, 1853 ("Lysimachia ciliata and, by the causeway near, the ovate-leaved, quite distinct from the lanceolate")

Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. See July 23, 1856 ("Pasture thistle, not long.") See also  August 6, 1852 ("I find a bumblebee asleep in a thistle blossom (a pasture thistle)") August 15, 1851 ("Cnicus pumilus, pasture thistle. How many insects a single one attracts ! While you sit by it, bee after bee will visit it, and busy himself probing for honey and loading himself with pollen, regardless of your over shadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from afar, and that use there is in its color."); October 11, 1856 ("A pasture thistle with many fresh flowers and bees on it.")

The dwarf choke-cherry is ripe now. See July 13, 1852 ("The northern wild red cherry of the woods is ripe, handsome, bright red, but scarcely edible; also, sooner than I expected, ") July 18, 1853 ("The Cerasus Virginiana, or choke-cherry, is turning, nearly ripe.") and note to July 25, 1853 ("Cerasus Virginiana, — choke-cherry, — just ripe."); also  August 15, 1852 ("The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side.); August 21, 1854 ("Red choke-berries are dried black; ripe some time ago."); August 25, 1854 (Choke-berries are very abundant there, but mostly dried black."); See also July 19, 1852 ("The Cerasus pumila ripe.");July 28, 1856 ("Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf.") August 10, 1860 ("Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry."); August 11, 1852 ("The rum cherry is ripe."); August 15, 1852 (' In E. Hubbard's swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. The birds make much account of them.")

Also the Pyrus arbutifolia. [Black choke-berry]  See July 19, 1854 ("Black choke-berry, several days."); July 24, 1853 ("The black choke-berry, probably some days."); August 12, 1858 ("I am also interested in the rich-looking glossy black choke-berries which nobody eats, but which bend down the bushes on every side,—sweetish berries with a dry, and so choking, taste. Some of the bushes are more than a dozen feet high."); September 6, 1857 (" I see in the swamp black choke berries twelve feet high at least and in fruit.")

I sit at my window to observe the sun set. See December 23, 1851 ("I see that there is to be a fine, clear sunset, and make myself a seat in the snow on the Cliff to witness it."); December 25, 1851 (“I go forth to see the sun set. Who knows how it will set, even half an hour beforehand ?”); January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever,”); June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature."); 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.”); November 4, 1857 ("I climb Pine Hill just as the sun is setting,"); November 13, 1857 ("See the sun rise or set if possible each day."); December 23, 1859 ("I ascended Ball's Hill to see the sun set.")

About three quarters of an hour after sunset the evening red is deepest. See July 20, 1852 ("And now the evening redness deepens till all the west or northwest horizon is red; as if the sky were rubbed there with some rich Indian pigment, a permanent dye; as if the Artist of the world had mixed his red paints on the edge of the inverted saucer of the sky. An exhilarating, cheering redness, most wholesome."); July 21, 1852 ("Do we perceive such a deep Indian red after the first starlight at any other season as now in July?"); July 26, 1852 ("The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky")

As the light in the west fades, the sky there, seen between the clouds, has a singular clarity and serenity. See December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset? "); January 17, 1852 ("Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds. As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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 © 2009-2021

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

October 7

Went to Plymouth to lecture and survey Watson's grounds. Returned the 15th.

The Decodon verticillatus (swamp loosestrife) very abundant, forming isles in the pond on Town Brook on Watson's farm, now turned (methinks it was) a somewhat orange (?) scarlet.

Measured a buckthorn on land of N. Russell & Co., bounding on Watson, close by the ruins of the cotton-factory, in five places from the ground to the first branching, or as high as my head. The diameters were 4 feet 8 inches, 4-6, 4-3, 4-2, 4-6. It was full of fruit now quite ripe, which Watson plants. The birds eat it.

Saw a small goldenrod in the woods with four very broad rays, a new kind to me

Saw also the English oak; leaf much like our white oak, but acorns large and long, with a long peduncle, and the bark of these young trees, twenty or twenty-five feet high, quite smooth.

Saw moon-seed, a climbing vine.

Also the leaf of the ginkgo tree, of pine-needles run together.

Spooner's garden a wilderness of fruit trees.

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1854

Went to Plymouth to lecture.   On Sunday, October 8, 1854  Thoreau gave his lecture "Moonlight" to a small audience of friends, among them Bronson Alcott. James Spooner, Marston Watson and his wife Mary Russell Watson.  See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden 259-255.  See also Night and Moonlight

The earth itself appears to me as a ripe purple fruit.

September 4. 

P. M. — To Well Meadow and Walden.

The purple culms and spikes of the crab-grass or finger-grass, spreading and often almost prostrate under our feet in sandy paths and causeways, are where the purple cuticle of the earth again shows itself, and we seem to be treading in our vintage whether we will or not. Earth has donned the purple. 

When, walking over some dry field (some time since), I looked down and saw the yellowish tuft of the Fimbristylis capillaris, with its spreading inverted cone of capillary culms, like the upper half of an hour-glass, but still more, when, pacing over the sandy railroad causeway, I look down and find myself treading on the purple culms of the crab-grass, I am reminded of the maturity of the year. 

We have now experienced the full effects of heat such as we have in this latitude. The earth itself appears to me as a ripe purple fruit, — though somewhat dusty here, — and I may have rubbed the bloom off with my feet. But if Bacchus can ever stand our climate, this must be his season. 

Topping the corn, which has been going on some days, now reveals the yellow and yellowing pumpkins. This is a genuine New England scene. The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits. 

The four-leaved loosestrife, which is pretty generally withering and withered, seems to have dried up, — to suffer peculiarly from the annual drought, — perhaps both on account of its tenuity and the sandiness or dryness of its locality. 

The Lycopodium complanatum sheds pollen [sic]. 

Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late? I see no flocks of them; not one of the latter, and only a few solitary robins about wild cherry trees, etc.

 A few yew berries, but they appear (?) to be drying up. The most wax-like and artificial and surprising of our wild berries, — as surprising as to find currants on hemlocks. 

In the Well Meadow Swamp, many apparent Aster miser, yet never inclining to red there (in the leaf) and sometimes with larger flowers (five eighths of an inch [in] diameter) and slenderer cauline leaves than common, out apparently almost as long as miser elsewhere. 

The swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum) is apparently in its prime. One or two on each has faded, but many more are to come. Some are six feet high and have radical leaves nearly two feet long. Even these in the shade have humblebees on them. 

You see small flocks of ducks, probably wood ducks, in the smaller woodland ponds now and for a week, as I at Andromeda Ponds, and can get nearer to them than in the spring. 

The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts, in the latter part of August and first part of September. The latter, which grows at the bottom of our frostiest hollows, turns a particularly clear dark purple, an effect plainly attributable to frost. 

I see it this afternoon in the dry, deep hollow just west of the middle Andromeda Pond. 

I think I see two kinds of three-ribbed goldenrod (beside Canadensis), both being commonly smooth-stemmed below and downy above, but one has very fine or small rays as compared with the other. They appear to be both equally common now. The fine-rayed at Sedge Path. 

See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long. 

Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now, — the pasture, lanceolate, and swamp, — and on them all you are pretty sure to see one or two humblebees. They be come more prominent and interesting in the scarcity of purple flowers. (On many you see also the splendid goldfinch, yellow and black (?) like the humble-bee.) The thistles beloved of humblebees and goldfinches. 

Three or four plants are peculiar now for bearing plentifully their fruit in drooping cymes, viz. the elder berry and the silky cornel and the Viburnum Lentago and Solanum Dulcamara. 

The other cornels do not generally come to droop before they lose their fruit. Nor do the viburnums droop much. The fruit of the Cornus sericea is particularly interesting to me, and not too profuse, — small cymes of various tints half concealed amid the leaves.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1859

The purple culms and spikes of the crab-grass or finger-grass. See September 4, 1858 ("P[anicum]. sanguinale, crab grass, finger grass, or purple panic grass")

The earth blazes not only with sun-flowers but with sun-fruits. See October 6, 1857 ("The very pumpkins yellowing in the fields become a feature in the landscape, and thus they have shone, maybe, for a thousand years here.")

Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late? I see no flocks of them; not one of the latter. See September 20, 1859 ("Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time")

The swamp thistle (Cirsium muticum) is apparently in its prime. See July 29, 1857 (" [the Maine Woods--} Cirsium muticum, or swamp thistle, abundantly in bloom."); September 13, 1854 ("I find the large thistle (Cirsium muticum) out of bloom,")

 The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts, in the latter part of August and first part of September. The fruit of the Cornus sericea is particularly interesting to me, and not too profuse, — small cymes of various tints half concealed amid the leaves. See September 4, 1857 ("Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen").; September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white."); August 31, 1856 (“The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now "); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river.”)

Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now, — the pasture, lanceolate, and swamp, — . . . The thistles beloved of humblebees and goldfinches. See September 4, 1860  ("The goldfinch is very busy pulling the thistle to pieces") and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Thistles.See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau the Goldfinch