We have now fairly begun to be surrounded with the brown of withered foliage.

October 12

P. M. — To Hubbard's Close. 

October 12, 2019

The common goldenrods on railroad causeway have begun to look hoary or gray, the down showing itself, — that November feature. 

I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences. 

There are now apparently very few ferns left (except the evergreen ones), and those are in sheltered places. This morning's frost will nearly finish them. 

Now for lycopodiums (the dendroideum not yet apparently in bloom), the dendroideum and lucidulum, etc., — how vivid a green ! — lifting their heads above the moist fallen leaves. 

We have now fairly begun to be surrounded with the brown of withered foliage, since the young white oaks have withered. This phenomenon begins with the very earliest frost (as this year August 17th), which kills some ferns and other most sensitive plants; and so gradually the plants, or their leaves, are killed and withered that we scarcely notice it till we are surrounded with the scenery of November.

I see quinces commonly left out yet, though apples are gathered. Probably their downy coats defend them.

October 12, 2022

(Avesong)

Going through Clintonia Swamp, I see many of those buff-brown puffballs one to two inches [in] diameter on the ground, partly open and with water in them and partly entire as yet, with a cracked surface. 

The willows on the Turnpike resound with the hum of bees, almost as in spring! I see apparently yellow wasps, hornets, and small bees attracted by something on their twigs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 12, 1859

The common goldenrods on railroad causeway have begun to look hoary or gray. See October 6, 1858 ("Most S. nemoralis, and most other goldenrods, now look hoary, killed by frost. The corn stands bleached and faded — quite white in the twilight"); October 8, 1856 ("S. nemoralis, done, many hoary, though a very few flowers linger.");  November 10, 1858 ("Aa new season begins, the pure November season of the russet earth and withered leaf and bare twigs and hoary withered goldenrods.")

I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences.  See April 15, 1859 (“The bay-wing now sings — the first I have been able to hear ”); October 9, 1858 (“Bay-wings flit along road.”); October 11, 1856 ("Bay-wing sparrows numerous"); ;October 12, 1859 ("I see scattered flocks of bay-wings amid the weeds and on the fences.") October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Now for lycopodiums — how vivid a green ! — lifting their heads above the moist fallen leaves.  See October 17, 1857 ("The Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly greener amid the withered leaves."); November 17, 1858 (" Lycopodium dendroideum . . .was apparently in its prime yesterdayy . . . So it would seem that these lycopodiums, at least, which have their habitat on the forest floor and but lately attracted my attention there (since the withered leaves fell around them and revealed them by the contrast of their color and they emerged from obscurity), —it would seem that they at the same time attained to their prime, their flowering season. It was coincident with this prominence.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Going through Clintonia Swamp, I see many of those buff-brown puffballs. See October 5, 1856 ("In the huckleberry pasture, by the fence of old barn boards, I notice many little pale-brown dome-shaped (puckered to a centre beneath) puff-balls, which emit their dust. When you pinch them, a smoke-like brown dust (snuff-colored) issues from the orifice at their top, just like smoke from a chimney. It is so fine and light that it rises into the air and is wafted away like smoke. They are low Oriental domes or mosques. Sometimes crowded together in nests, like a collection of humble cottages on the moor, in the coal pit or Numidian style; for there is suggested some humble hearth beneath, from which this smoke comes up, as it were the homes of slugs and crickets.")

The willows on the Turnpike resound with the hum of bees, almost as in spring! I see apparently yellow wasps, hornets, and small bees attracted by something on their twigs. See October 12, 1856 ("It is interesting to see how some of the few flowers which still linger are frequented by bees and other insects. . . [I]n the garden, I see half a dozen honey bees, many more flies, some wasps, a grasshopper, and a large handsome butterfly, . . . I did not suspect such a congregation in the desolate garden")

The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.

May 2.

May 2,, 1855

P. M. — By boat up Assabet. 

Quince begins to leaf, and pear; perhaps some of last earlier. 

Aspen leaves of young trees —or twenty to twenty-five feet high—an inch long suddenly; say yesterday began; not till the 11th last year. Leafing, then, is differently affected by the season from flowering. The leafing is apparently comparatively earlier this year than the flowering. The young aspens are the first of indigenous trees conspicuously leafed.

Diervilla, say began to leaf with viburnums. 

Amelanchier Botryapium yesterday leafed. 

That small native willow now in flower, or say yesterday, just before leaf, —for the first seem to be bracts, — two to seven or eight feet high, very slender and curving. Apparently has three or four lanceolate toothed bracts at base of petioled catkin; male three quarters and female one inch long; scales black and silky-haired; ovary oblong-oval, stalked, downy, with a small yellowish gland not so long as its stalk. See leaf by and by. 

Saw many crow blackbirds day before yesterday. 

Vigorous look the little spots of triangular sedge (?) springing up on the river-banks, five or six inches high, yellowish below, glaucous and hoary atop, straight and rigid. 

Many clamshells have round brassy-colored spots as big as a fourpence. Found one opened by rats last winter, almost entirely the color of tarnished brass within. 

Open the Assabet spring. 

The anemone is well named, for see now the nemorosa, amid the fallen brush and leaves, trembling in the wind, so fragile. 

Hellebore seems a little later than the cabbage. 

Was that a harrier seen at first skimming low then seating and circling, with a broad whiteness on the wings beneath?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 2, 1855

Aspen are the first trees to leaf.  . . .  See May 2, 1859 (" I am surprised by the tender yellowish green of the aspen leaf just expanded suddenly, even like a fire, seen in the sun, against the dark-brown twigs of the wood, though these leafets are yet but thinly dispersed. It is very enlivening."); May 17, 1860    ("Standing in the meadow near the early aspen at the island, I hear the first fluttering of leaves, - a peculiar sound, at first unaccountable to me.") See also  A Book of Seasons,   Aspens.