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

September 25


The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come. Fires have become comfortable. The evenings are pretty long. 

2 P. M. To bathe in Hubbard's meadow, thence to ― Cliffs. 

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. The air is of crystal purity.

Both air and water are so transparent that the fisherman tries in vain to deceive the fish with his baits. Even our commonly muddy river looks clear to-day.

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. 

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

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

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky . . . I brought home two of the pods which were already bursting open, and amused myself from day to day with releasing the seeds and watching [them] rise slowly into the heavens till they were lost to my eye. No doubt the greater or less rapidity with which they rose would serve as a natural barometer to test the condition of the air. 

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. 

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, 2020

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milkweed. There is almost always a pair of hawks. Their shrill scream, that of the owls, and wolves are all related.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1851

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. See 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.")

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. See September 24, 1854 (" It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.");. September 26, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky. See September 24, 1851 ("I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and.  . . then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctuation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. See . July 15, 1854 ("There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now"); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed . . .also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wing"); July 16, 1854 ("Many yellow butterflies and red on clover and yarrow."); . September 6, 1858 ("Solidago nemoralis . . . is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

The hornets' nest. See September 28, 1851 ("Here was a large hornets' nest . . .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."); October 15, 1855 (“The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone.”); October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.")

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. See September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); see also August 7, 1853 ("Do I not already hear the jays with more distinctness, as in the fall and winter?"); September 21, 1859 (" Jays are more frequently heard of late.");October 6, 1856 ("The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods, when so many birds have left us.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air .  . . There is almost always a pair.  See September 25, 1851 ("See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows and another, or a hen-hawk, sailing on high."); See also September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? There are eight or ten in sight from the Cliffs,") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

To watch milkweed  seeds

rising higher and higher 

till lost in the sky –

Hawks too sail about 

in the clear air looking white

against the green pines.

The light of the setting sun suddenly lighting up the needles of the white pine

November 22.

November 22, 2021

The milkweed pods by the roadside are yet but half emptied of their silky contents. For months the gales are dispersing their seeds, though we have had snow.

Saw E. Hosmer this afternoon making a road for himself along a hillside (I being on my way to Saw Mill Brook ).  He turned over a stone, and I saw under it many crickets and ants still lively, which had gone into winter quarters there apparently. There were many little galleries leading under the stone, indenting the hardened earth like veins.  (Mem. Turn over a rock in midwinter and see if you can find them.) That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately. I have frequently seen them lurking under the eaves or portico of a stone, even in midsummer.

At the brook the partridge-berries checker the ground with their leaves, now interspersed with red berries.

The cress at the bottom of the brook is doubly beautiful now, because it is green while most other plants are sere. It rises and falls and waves with the current.

There are many young hornbeams there which still retain their withered leaves.

As I returned through Hosmer's field, the sun was setting just beneath a black cloud by which it had been obscured, and as it had been a cold and windy afternoon, its light, which fell suddenly on some white pines between me and it, lighting them up like a shimmering fire, and also on the oak leaves and chestnut stems, was quite a circumstance. 

It was from the contrast between the dark and comfortless afternoon and this bright and cheerful light, almost fire.

The eastern hills and woods, too, were clothed in a still golden light.

The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine between you and it, after a raw and louring afternoon near the beginning of winter, is a memorable phenomenon.

A sort of Indian summer in the day, which thus far has been denied to the year.

After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1851

The milkweed pods by the roadside are yet but half emptied of their silky contents. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood."); September 21, 1856 ("Asclepias Cornuti discounting."); October 19, 1856 ("The Asclepias Cornuti pods are now apparently in the midst of discounting."); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free"); October 25, 1858 ("Near the end of the causeway, milkweed is copiously discounting."); November 20, 1858 ("The common milkweed (Asclepias Cornuti) and some thistles still discounting.") 

Gone into winter quarters there apparently . . . That is the reason, then, that I have not heard the crickets lately. See November 19, 1857 ("Turning up a stone on Fair Haven Hill, I find many small dead crickets about the edges, which have endeavored to get under it and apparently have been killed by the frost.") See also November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1855 ("Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. "); November 11, 1858 ("Hear a few of the common cricket on the side of Clamshell. Thus they are confined now to the sun on the south sides of hills and woods. They are quite silent long before sunset."); November 12, 1853 ("The last cricket, full of cheer and faith, piping to himself, as the last man might");November 13, 1851 ("Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters."); November 13, 1858 (Frozen ground, ice, and snow have now banished the few remaining skaters (if there were any ?), crickets, and water-bugs.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November (listening for the last cricket)

At the brook the partridge-berries checker the ground with their leaves, now interspersed with red berries. See November 16, 1850 (“The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not properly called checker-berries ?”);   November 19, 1850 ("The partridge-berry and checkerberry, and winter-green leaves even, are more conspicuous.”); November 27, 1853 ("Checkerberries and partridge-berries are both numerous and obvious now"); December 3, 1853 ("The still green Mitchella repens and checkerberry in shelter, both with fruit"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

The light of the setting sun, just emerged from a cloud and suddenly falling on and lighting up the needles of the white pine. . . .After a cold gray day this cheering light almost warms us by its resemblance to fire. See November 23, 1851 ("Another such a sunset to - night as the last."); November 25, 1851 ("That kind of sunset which I witnessed on Saturday and Sunday is perhaps peculiar to the late autumn. The sun is unseen behind a hill. Only this bright white light like a fire falls on the trembling needles of the pine.") See also  August 28, 1860 ("Just before setting, the sun comes out into a clear space in the horizon and a sudden blaze of light falls on east end of the pond and the hillside. At this angle a double amount of bright sunlight reflects from the water up to the underside of the still very fresh green leaves of the bushes and trees on the shore and on Pine Hill, revealing the most vivid and varied shades of green."); October 21, 1857 (" It has just come out beneath a great cold slate-colored cloud that occupies most of the western sky . . . and now its rays, slanting over the hill in whose shadow I float, fall on the eastern trees and hills with a thin, yellow light like a clear yellow wine, but somehow it reminds me that now the hearth-side is getting to be a more comfortable place than out-of-doors. "); October 28, 1852 (“Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape.”); October 28, 1857 ("All at once a low-slanted glade of sunlight from one of heaven’s west windows behind me fell on the bare gray maples, lighting them up with an incredibly intense and pure white light; then, going out there, it lit up some white birch stems south of the pond, then the gray rocks and the pale reddish young oaks of the lower cliffs, and then the very pale brown meadow-grass, and at last the brilliant white breasts of two ducks, tossing on the agitated surface far off on the pond, which I had not detected before. It was but a transient ray, and there was no sunshine afterward, but the intensity of the light was surprising and impressive, like a halo, a glory in which only the just deserved to live.. . . It was a serene, elysian light, in which the deeds I have dreamed of but not realized might have been performed. At the eleventh hour, late in the year, we have visions of the life we might have lived."); November 9, 1858 (“ We had a true November sunset after a dark, cloudy afternoon. The sun reached a clear stratum just before setting, beneath the dark cloud, though ready to enter another on the horizon’s edge, and a cold, yellow sunlight suddenly illumined the withered grass of the fields around, near and far, eastward. Such a phenomenon as, when it occurs later, I call the afterglow of the year."); November 10, 1858 ("A cool and silvery light is the prevailing one; dark-blue or slate-colored clouds in the west, and the sun going down in them. All the light of November may be called an afterglow. "); November 17, 1858 ("We are interested at this season by the manifold ways in which the light is reflected to us. . . . The setting sun, too, is reflected from windows more brightly than at any other season. “November Lights" would be a theme for me. "); November 17, 1859 (“How fair and memorable this prospect when you stand opposite to the sun, these November afternoons, and look over the red andromeda swamp”); November 18, 1857 ("The sunlight is a peculiarly thin and clear yellow, falling on the pale-brown bleaching herbage of the fields at this season. There is no redness in it. This is November sunlight."); November 20, 1858 ("The glory of November is in its silvery, sparkling lights reflected from a myriad of surfaces. See November 28, 1856 ("3.30 p. m., the sunlight reflected from the many ascending twigs . . . It is a true November phenomenon."); November 29, 1852 ("about 4 o'clock, the sun sank below some clouds, or they rose above it, and it shone out with that bright, calm, memorable light which I have else where described, lighting up the pitch pines and everything. "); November 29, 1853 (Suddenly a glorious yellow sunlight falls on all the eastern landscape. . . I think that we have some such sunsets as this, and peculiar to the season, every year. I should call it the russet afterglow of the year.""); December 25, 1858 ("Now that the sun is setting, all its light seems to glance over the snow-clad pond and strike the rocky shore under the pitch pines at the northeast end. Though the bare rocky shore there is only a foot or a foot and a half high as I look, it reflects so much light that the rocks are singularly distinct") 

After a cold gray day. See November 18, 1852 ("These are cold, gray days.")

One milkweed with faith in its seeds.

September 24

Returning over the causeway from Flint's Pond 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.

It is rare that we perceive this purple tint in the air, telling of the juice of the wild grape and poke-berries. The empurpled hills! Methinks I have only noticed this in cooler weather.

Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness, and then I would suddenly find myself abreast of them without having seen anything or heard their footsteps.

It was cloudy and rainy weather combined with the absence of the moon. So dark a night that, if a farmer who had come in a-shopping had spent but an hour after sunset in some shop, he might find himself a prisoner in the village for the night.

Thick darkness.

8 A. M. — To Lee's Bridge via Conantum.

It is a cool and windy morning, and I have donned a thick coat for a walk.

The wind is from the north, so that the telegraph harp does not sound where I cross.

This windy autumnal weather is very exciting and bracing, clear and cold, after the rain of yesterday, it having cleared off in the night.

I see a small hawk, a pigeon (?) hawk, over the Depot Field, which can hardly fly against the wind.

At Hubbard's Grove the wind roars loudly in the woods.

Grapes are ripe and already shrivelled by frost; barberries also.

It is cattle show day at Lowell.

Yesterday's wind and rain has strewn the ground with leaves, especially under the apple trees. Rain coming after frost seems to loosen the hold of the leaves, making them rot off.

Saw a woodchuck disappearing in his hole.

The river washes up-stream before the wind, with white streaks of foam on its dark surface, diagonally to its course, showing the direction of the wind. Its surface, reflecting the sun, is dazzlingly bright.

The outlines of the hills are remarkably distinct and firm, and their surfaces bare and hard, not clothed with a thick air.

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.

The huckleberry bushes on Conantum are all turned red.

September 24, 2021

What can be handsomer for a picture than our river scenery now? Take this view from the first Conantum Cliff:

• First this smoothly shorn meadow on the west side of the stream, with all the swaths distinct, sprinkled with apple trees casting heavy shadows black as ink, such as can be seen only in this clear air, this strong light, one cow wandering restlessly about in it and lowing; 
• then the blue river, scarcely darker than and not to be distinguished from the sky, its waves driven southward, or up-stream, by the wind, making it appear to flow that way, bordered by willows and button-bushes; 
• then the narrow meadow beyond, with varied lights and shades from its waving grass, which for some reason has not been cut this year, though so dry, now at length each grass-blade bending south before the wintry blast, as if bending for aid in that direction; 
• then the hill rising sixty feet to a terrace-like plain covered with shrub oaks, maples, etc., now variously tinted, clad all in a livery of gay colors, every bush a feather in its cap; and
•  further in the rear the wood crowned Cliff some two hundred feet high, where gray rocks here and there project from amidst the bushes, with its orchard on the slope; 
• and to the right of the Cliff the distant Lincoln hills in the horizon.

The landscape so handsomely colored, the air so clear and wholesome; and the surface of the earth is so pleasingly varied, that it seems rarely fitted for the abode of man.

In Cohush Swamp the sumach leaves have turned a very deep red, but have not lost their fragrance. I notice wild apples growing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over the colored, painted leaves of the sumach, and reminding me that they were ripened and colored by the same influences, some green, some yellow, some red, like the leaves.

Fell in with a man whose breath smelled of spirit which he had drunk. How could I but feel that it was his own spirit that I smelt? 

Behind Miles's, Darius Miles's, that was, I asked an Irishman how many potatoes he could dig in a day, wishing to know how well they yielded. “Well, I don't keep any account,” he answered; “I scratch away, and let the day's work praise itself.” Aye, there's the difference between the Irish man and the Yankee; the Yankee keeps an account. The simple honesty of the Irish pleases me.

A sparrow hawk, hardly so big as a nighthawk, flew over high above my head, — a pretty little graceful fellow, too small and delicate to be rapacious.

Found a grove of young sugar maples (Acer saccharinum ) behind what was Miles's. How silently and yet startlingly the existence of these sugar maples was revealed to me, which I had not thought grew in my immediate neighborhood, — when first I perceived the entire edges of its leaves and their obtuse sinuses.

Such near hills as Nobscot and Nashoba have lost all their azure in this clear air and plainly belong to earth. Give me clearness nevertheless, though my heavens be moved further off to pay for it.

I perceive from the hill behind Lee's that much of the river meadows is not cut, though they have been very dry. The sun-sparkle on the river is dazzlingly bright in this atmosphere, as it has not been, perchance, for many a month.

It is so cold I am glad to sit behind the wall.

Still the great bidens blooms by the causeway side beyond the bridge.

At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca now point upward. Did they before all point down? Have they turned up? They are already bursting.

I release some seeds with the long, fine silk attached. The fine threads fly apart at once, open with a spring, and then ray themselves out into a hemispherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor and all reflecting prismatic or rainbow tints. The seeds, besides, are furnished with wings, which plainly keep them steady and prevent their whirling round. I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and I fear it will make shipwreck against the neighboring wood; but no, as it approaches it, it surely rises above it, and then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctuation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it.

How many myriads go sailing away at this season, high over hill and meadow and river, on various tacks until the wind lulls, to plant their race in new localities, who can tell how many miles distant! And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, — a perfect adaptation to this end, a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs.

Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

On Mt. Misery some very rich yellow leaves — clear yellow — of the Populus grandidentata, which still love to wag, and tremble in my hands. Also canoe birches there.

The river and pond from the side of the sun look comparatively dark.

As I look over the country westward and northwestward, the prospect looks already bleak and wintry. The surface of the earth between the forests is no longer green, but russet and hoary. You see distinctly eight or ten miles the russet earth and even houses, and then its outline is distinctly traced against the further blue mountains, thirty or thirty-five miles distant. You see distinctly perhaps to the height of land between the Nashua and Concord, and then the convexity of the earth conceals the further hills, though high, and your vision leaps a broad valley at once to the mountains.

Get home at noon.

At sundown the wind has all gone down.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 24, 1851

 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. See October 19, 1858 ("The sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple")

Last night was exceedingly dark. I could not see the sidewalk in the street, but only felt it with my feet. I was obliged to whistle to warn travellers of my nearness. See September 12, 1860 ("A dark and stormy night . . . Where the fence is not painted white I can see nothing, and go whistling for fear I run against some one. . . .You walk with your hands out to feel the fences and trees"); September 18, 1857 ("It was exceedingly dark. I met two persons within a mile, and they were obliged to call out from a rod distant lest we should run against each other. ")

I notice one red tree, a red maple, against the green woodside in Conant's meadow. See September 24, 1855 ("the maples are but just beginning to blush") See also September 25, 1857 ("The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence"); 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."); September 25, 1857 ("A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar."); 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 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."

At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca now point upward. Did they before all point down? Have they turned up? See August 24, 1851 ("The pods of the Asclepias pulchra stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver, an open salver truly! Those of the Asclepias Syriaca hang down.")

The fine threads fly apart at once, open with a spring, and then ray themselves out into a hemispherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor. . . .a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood."); October 23, 1852 ("The milkweed (Syriaca) now rapidly discounting. The lanceolate pods having opened, the seeds spring out on the least jar, or when dried by the sun, and form a little fluctuating white silky mass or tuft, each held by the extremities of the fine threads, until a stronger puff of wind sets them free. It is a pleasant sight to see it dispersing its seeds")

The further blue mountains, thirty or thirty-five miles distant. See June 3, 1850 ("The landscape is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon."); September 12, 1851 ("It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day"); August 2, 1852 ("In many moods it is cheering to look across hence to that blue rim of the earth,"); March 31, 1853 ("It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top,. . . still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it.'); September 27, 1853 ("From our native hills we look out easily to the far blue mountains, which seem to preside over them.");October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 22, 1860 ("Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air, - the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountaintop through some new vista, - this is wealth enough for one afternoon.")

Almost every plant, however humble, has its day.

 

September 10. 

 

Lowell to Boston and Concord.

There was a frost this morning, as my host, who keeps a market, informed me.

Leaving Lowell at 7 A. M. in the cars, I observed and admired the dew on a fine grass in the meadows, which was almost as white and silvery as frost when the rays of the newly risen sun fell on it.

Some of it was probably the frost of the morning melted.

I saw that this phenomenon was confined to one species of grass, which grew in narrow curving lines and small patches along the edges of the meadows or lowest ground, grass with very fine stems and branches, which held the dew; in short, that it was what I had falsely called Eragrostis capillaris, but which is probably the Sporobolus serotinus, almost the only, if not the only, grass there in its prime.

And thus this plant has its day.

Owing to the number of its а very fine branches, now in their prime, it holds the dew like a cobweb,-a clear drop at the end and lesser drops or beads all along the fine branches and stems. 

It grows on the higher parts of the meadows, where other herbage is thin, and is the less apt to be cut; and, seen toward the sun not long after sunrise, it is very conspicuous and bright a quarter of a mile off, like frostwork.

Call it dew-grass.

I find its hyaline seed.

September 10, 2022

Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day, and sooner or later becomes the characteristic feature of some part of the landscape or other.

Almost all other grasses are now either cut or withering, and are, beside, so coarse comparatively that they can never present this phenomenon.

It is only a grass that is in its full vigor, as well as fine-branched (capillary), that can thus attract and uphold the dew.

This is noticed about the time the first frosts come.

If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these plants growing in your neighborhood.

My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox [Like the silver, made a variety of the red by Baird.] from Lowell over this way and lost him at Chelmsford. Had heard of him within about six years. A Carlisle man also tells me since that this fox used to turn off and run northwest from Chelmsford, but that he would soon after return.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1860

Almost every plant, however humble, has its day. See March 18, 1853 ("These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development."); August 26, 1856 ("Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours."); August 30, 1851 ("This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!");  September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!"); September 17, 1857 ("How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone."); October 22, 1858 ("When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints")


My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox. See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one.") See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

Dew on a fine grass

white and silvery as frost –

the newly risen sun.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,   Almost every plant, however humble, has its day.

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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