I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time

August 26. 

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. 

The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. 

The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is surmounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropiperoides. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. 

Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. 

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound.

 Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. 

The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. 

How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth is trodden, bordering on paths ! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. 

The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. 

The river is a little cooled by yesterday's rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. 

I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. 

Now for dangle-berries. 

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. 

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. 

I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this.

The Uvularia sessilifolia is for the most part turned yellow, with large green fruit, or even withered and brown. 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. 

I see a goldfinch eating the seeds of the coarse barn yard grass, perched on it. It then goes off with a cool twitter. 

Notice arrowhead leaves very curiously eaten by some insect. They are dotted all over in lines with small roundish white scales, — which your nail will remove, and then a scar is seen beneath, — as if some juice had exuded from each puncture and then hardened. 

The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog- days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct; saw-grass reveals its spikes in the shorn fields; sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. Farmers feel encouraged about their late potatoes and corn. Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. Meadow-haying is over. 

The first significant event (for a long time) was the frost of the 17th. That was the beginning of winter, the first summons to summer. Some of her forces succumbed to it. The second event was the rain of yesterday. 

My neighbor told me yesterday that about four inches of rain had fallen, for he sent his man for a pail that was left in the garden during the rain, and there was about four inches depth of water in it. I inquired if the pail had upright sides. "No," he said, "it was flaring ! ! " However, according to another, there was full four inches in a tub. 

Leersia or cut-grass in prime at Potter's holes. 

That first frost on the 17th was the first stroke of winter aiming at the scalp of summer. Like a stealthy and insidious aboriginal enemy, it made its assault just before daylight in some deep and far-away hollow and then silently withdrew. Few have seen the drooping plants, but the news of this stroke circulates rapidly through the village. Men communicate it with a tone of warning. The foe is gone by sunrise, but some fearful neighbors who have visited their potato and cranberry patches report this stroke. The implacable and irresistible foe to all this tender greenness is not far off, nor can we be sure, any month in the year, that some scout from his low camp may not strike down the tenderest of the children of summer. 

The earliest and latest frosts are not distinguishable. This foe will go on steadily increasing in strength and boldness, till his white camps will be pitched over all the fields, and we shall be compelled to take refuge in our strongholds, with some of summer's withered spoils stored up in barns, maintaining ourselves and our herds on the seeds and roots and withered grass which we have embarned. Men in anticipation of this time have been busily collecting and curing the green blades all the country over, while they have still some nutriment in them. Cattle and horses have been dragging homeward their winter's food.

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side, Drosera Flat, not out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1859


Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe. See note to August 23, 1856 (Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. ")
  
Cornus sericea berries See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. See August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays"); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")

One of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders. See September 12, 1858 ("They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum. See August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.") 

[Northern bog-clubmoss is by far the most common species of bog-clubmoss in New England.  The tops of the erect shoots are distinctively widened. Its diminutive size, thin horizontal shoots, and entire trophophylls (sterile leaves) quickly distinguish most populations; it frequently occurs in the absence of other species or hybrids. ~ GoBotany]

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

The first-fruits of the leafy harvest.

August 28. 

August 28, 2018

Soaking rain last night, straight down. 

When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were prematurely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side. Especially the scarlet leaves of the cultivated cherry are seen to have fallen. Their change, then, is not owing to drought, but commonly a portion of them ripens thus early, reminding us of October and November. 

When, as I go to the post-office this morning, I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground on one side of the tree and blown several rods from it into a neighboring yard, I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the'other slope. The prospect is now toward winter. 

These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. 

The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker, which sounds rare; perhaps not heard since spring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1858


These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest. See August 29, 1852 (The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind.")

I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope. See August 18, 1853 (" as if the rest of the year were down-hill "); July 15, 1854 ("We seem to be passing a dividing line between spring and autumn, and begin to descend the long slope toward winter"); July 28, 1854 (“ . . . having as it were attained the ridge of the summer, commenced to descend the long slope toward winter, the afternoon and down-hill of the year”) ; August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter.")

The sharp whistling note of a downy woodpecker. See September 17, 1852 ("I hear the downy woodpecker whistle, and see him looking about the apple trees as if to bore him a hole."); 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?"); January 5, 1860 ("I see where the downy woodpecker has worked lately by the chips of bark and rotten wood scattered over the snow, though I rarely see him in the winter. Once to-day, however, I hear his sharp voice, ");

I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself.

August 23. 

Cooler than ever. Some must have fires, and I close my window. 

P. M. —Britton’s camp via Hubbard’s Close. 

The rhexia in the field west of Clintonia Swamp makes a great show now, though a little past prime. 

I go through the swamp, wading through the luxuriant cinnamon fern, which has complete possession of the swamp floor. Its great fronds, curving this way and that, remind me [of] a tropical vegetation. They are as high as my head and about a foot wide; may stand higher than my head without being stretched out. They grow in tufts of a dozen, so close that their fronds interlace and form one green waving mass. There in the swamp cellar under the maples. A forest of maples rises from a forest of ferns. My clothes are covered with the pale-brown wool which I have rubbed off their stems.

See an abundance of pine-sap on the right of Pine-sap Path. It is almost all erect, some eight to nine inches high, and all effete there. Some stems are reddish. It lifts the leaves with it like the Indian-pipe, but is not so delicate as that. The Indian-pipe is still pushing up.

Everywhere in woods and swamps I am already reminded of the fall. 

I see the spotted sarsaparilla leaves and brakes, and, in swamps, the withering and blackened skunk-cabbage and hellebore, and, by the river, the already blackening pontederias and pipes. 

There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter.

I see a golden-crowned thrush, but it is silent except a chip; sitting low on a twig near the main stem of a tree, in these deep woods.

High blackberries now in their prime, their great racemes of shining black fruit, mixed with red and green, bent over amid the sweet-fern and sumach on sunny hill sides, or growing more rankly with larger fruit by rich roadsides and in lower ground. 

The chewink note of a chewink (not common), also a cuckoo’s note.

Smooth sumach berries all turned crimson. This fruit is now erect spear-heads, rising from the ample dark-green, unspotted leaves, pointing in various directions. 

I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. 

Viburnum nudum berries, apparently but a day or two. 

Epilobium angustifolium is abundantly shedding its downy seed, — wands of white and pink. 

Emerson says that he and Agassiz and Company broke some dozens of ale-bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! It sounds rather Cockneyish. He says that he shot a peetweet for Agassiz, and this, I think he said, was the first game he ever bagged. He carried a double-barrelled gun, —rifle and shotgun, — which he bought for the purpose, which he says received much commendation, — all parties thought it a very pretty piece. 

Think of Emerson shooting a peetweet (with shot) for Agassiz, and cracking an ale-bottle (after emptying it) with his rifle at six rods! They cut several pounds of lead out of the tree. It is just what Mike Saunders, the merchant’s clerk, did when he was there.  

The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i.e. writing in my Journal. 

Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, “You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,” i.e. be reminded that such things still are.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1858

There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter. See August 5, 1854 ("It is one long acclivity from winter to midsummer and another long declivity from midsummer to winter."); August 19, 1851("Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.”); August 23. 1853 ("Observing the blackness of the foliage, especially between me and the light, I am reminded that it begins in the spring, the dewy dawn of the year, with a silvery hoary downiness, changing to a yellowish or light green, — the saffron-robed morn, — then to a pure, spotless, glossy green with light under sides reflecting the light, — the forenoon, — and now the dark green, or early afternoon, when shadows begin to increase, and next it will turn yellow or red, — the sunset sky, — and finally sere brown and black, when the night of the year sets in.")

High blackberries now in their prime. See August 23, 1856 ("Now for high blackberries"); and note to August 31, 1857 ("An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit?")

I see dense patches of the pearly everlasting, maintaining their ground in the midst of dense green sweet-fern, a striking contrast of snow-white and green. See August 23, 1856 ("I see a bed of Antennaria margaritacea, now in its prime, by the railroad, and very handsome. . . . dense pearly masses of flowers covered with bees and butterflies")

Everywhere in woods 

and swamps I am already 

reminded of fall. 

Preface to Autumn

August 20. 

Edward Hoar has found in his garden two or three specimens of what appears to be the Veronica Bumbaumii, which blossomed at least a month ago. Yet I should say the pods were turgid, and, though obcordate enough, I do not know in what sense they are “obcordate-triangular.” 

He found a Viburnum dentatum with leaves somewhat narrower than common and wedge shaped at base. He has also the Rudbeckia speciosa, cultivated in a Concord garden. 

Flannery tells me that at about four o’clock this morning he saw white frost on the grass in the low ground near Holbrook’s meadow. Up early enough to see a frost in August! 

P. M. — To Poplar Hill and the Great Fields. 

It is still cool weather with a northwest wind. This weather is a preface to autumn. There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. 

August 20, 2018

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color, suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches. 

Both willows and poplars have leaves of a light color, at least beneath, contrasting with most other trees.

Generally there has been no drought this year. Nothing in the landscape suggests it. Yet no doubt these leaves are, compared with themselves six or eight weeks ago, as usual, “horny and dry,” as one remarks by my side. 

You see them digging potatoes, with cart and barrels, in the fields on all hands, before they are fairly ripe, for fear of rot or a fall in the price, and I see the empty barrels coming back from market already. 

Polygonum dumetorum, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1858

There is more shadow in the landscape than a week ago, methinks, and the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady. See August 20, 1853 ("I am struck by . . .  the darkness and heaviness of the shade."); August 20, 1851 ("The song of the crickets . . . fails not in its season"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

The grass and foliage and landscape generally are of a more thought-inspiring color suggest what some perchance would call a pleasing melancholy. See August 18, 1856 ("I hear the steady shrilling of . . . the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound . . . It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,"); August 18, 1851 ("It plainly makes men sad to think. Hence pensiveness is akin to sadness"); see also August 17, 1851 ("I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pensiveness be akin to sadness? There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. It is positively joyful to me.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

In some meadows, as I look southwesterly, the aftermath looks a bright yellowish-green in patches.See July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun."); July 28, 1852 ("There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown."); August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring."); August 10, 1854 ("As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields."); August 17, 1858 ("The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green. "); August 21, 1851 ("Mowing to some extent improves the landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind")

This weather is a preface to autumn. See August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character")

August 20. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 20

 

More shadow in the 

landscape than a week ago –

preface to autumn.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Preface to Autumn

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

You may say it is the first day of autumn.

August 19. 

P. M. — Sail to Baker Farm shore. 

It is cool with a considerable northwesterly wind, so that we can sail to Fair Haven. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. 

You notice the louder and clearer ring of crickets, and the large, handsome red spikes of the Polygonum amphibium are now generally conspicuous along the shore. The P. hydropiperoides fairly begins to show. The front-rank polygonum is now in prime. 

We scare up a stake-driver several times. The blue heron has within a week reappeared in our meadows, and the stake-driver begins to be seen oftener, and as early as the 5th I noticed young summer ducks about; the same of hawks, owls, etc. 

This occurs as soon as the young birds can take care of themselves, and some appear to be very early on the return southward, with the very earliest prospect of fall. Such birds are not only more abundant but, methinks, more at leisure now, having reared their family, and perhaps they are less shy. 

Yes, bitterns are more frequently seen now to lift themselves from amid the pontederia or flags, and take their sluggish flight to a new resting-place, —bitterns which either have got through the labors of breeding or are now first able to shift for themselves.

And likewise blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. 

When I see the first heron, like a dusky blue wave undulating over our meadows again, I think, since I saw them going northward the other day, how many of these forms have been added to the landscape, complete from bill to toe, while, perhaps, I have idled! 

I see two herons. A small bird is pursuing the heron as it does a hawk. Perhaps it is a blackbird and the herons gobble up their young! 

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. There is wont to be just water [sic] enough above the surface to drive it along. 

The heads of the wool-grass are now brown and, in many meadows, lodged. 

The button-bush is about done. Can hardly see a blossom. 

The mikania not yet quite in prime. 

Pontederia has already begun to wane; i. e., the fields of them are not so dense, many seed-vessels having turned down; and some leaves are already withered and black, but the remaining spikes are as fair as ever. 

It chances that I see no yellow lilies. They must be scarce now. 

The water is high for the season. Water cool to bather. 

We have our first green corn to-day, but it is late.

The saw-grass (Paspalum?) of mown fields, not long. 

I noticed the localities of black willows as far up as the mouth of the river in Fair Haven Pond, but not so carefully as elsewhere, and from the last observations I infer that the willow grows especially and almost exclusively in places where the drift is most likely to lodge, as on capes and points and concave sides of the river, though I noticed a few exceptions to my rule. 

It is so cool, some apprehend a frost to-night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 19, 1858

The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. See August 19, 1853 ("The first bright day of the fall . . .. The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days.”)

I see thistle-down, grayish-white, floating low quite across Fair Haven Pond. September 1, 1852 (“-- a delicate hint of approaching autumn, when the first thistle-down descends on some smooth lake's surface, full of reflections, in the woods, sign to the fishes of the ripening year.”)

Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. See August 12, 1853 ("See the blue herons opposite Fair Haven Hill, as if they had bred here.”); August 14,1859 (" If you would know the depth of the water on these few shoalest places of Musketaquid, ask the blue heron that wades and fishes there"): August 15, 1852 (“See a blue heron on the meadow.”); August 15, 1860 ("See a blue heron.”); August 16. 1858 ("A blue heron, with its great undulating wings, prominent cutwater, and leisurely flight, goes over southwest, cutting off the bend of the river west of our house."); August 21, 1859 ("The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. Are they not more common on our river such [drought] years as this?"); August 24, 1854 (“See a blue heron standing on the meadow at Fair Haven Pond. At a distance before you, only the two waving lines appear, and you would not suspect the long neck and legs.”); August 22, 1854 (“See a blue heron — apparently a young bird, of a brownish blue — fly up from one of these pools, and a stake-driver from another, and also see their great tracks on the mud, and the feathers they had shed, — some of the long, narrow white neck-feathers of the heron. The tracks of the heron are about six inches long.”); August 26, 1856 (“A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

August 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 19

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

New lieferungs of the fall.

August 4

August 4, 2018

To Walden by poorhouse road. 

Have had a gentle rain, and now with a lowering sky, but still I hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. 

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. It has allayed all excitement. 

I hear the singular watery twitter of the goldfinch, ter tweeter e et or e ee, as it ricochets over, he and his russet ( ?) female. 

The chirp of the constant chip-bird and the plaintive strain of the lark, also. 

I must make a list of those birds which, like the lark and the robin, if they do not stay all the year, are heard to sing longest of those that migrate. 

The bobolink and thrasher, etc., are silent. 

English-haying is long since done, only meadow-haying going on now. 

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn. 

The little bees have gone to sleep amid the clethra blossoms in the rain and are not yet aroused. 

What is that weed somewhat like wormwood and amaranth on the ditch by roadside here? 

What the vine now budded like clematis in the wall? 

Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now. 

A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season, when the air and water are perfectly still, but the sky still overcast; first, because the lake is very smooth at such a time, second, as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it. With its glassy reflecting surface, it is somewhat more heavenly and more full of light than the regions of the air above it. 

There is a pleasing vista southward over and through a wide indentation in the hills which form its shore, where their opposite sides slope to each other so as to suggest a stream flowing from it in that direction through a wooded valley, toward some distant blue hills in Sudbury and Framingham, Goodman's and Nobscot; that is, you look over and between the low near and green hills to the distant, which are tinged with blue, the heavenly color. 

Such is what is fair to mortal eyes. In the meanwhile the wood thrush sings in the woods around the lake.

Pycnanthemum lanceolatum, probably as early as the other variety, Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort, some time in July. 

History has not been so truthfully or livingly, convincingly, written but that we still need the evidence, the oral testimony of an eye-witness. Hence I am singularly surprised when I read of the celebrated Henry Jenkins (who lived to be some one hundred and sixty nine years old), who used to preface his conversation in this wise, "About a hundred and thirty years ago, when I was butler to Lord Conyers," etc. I am surprised to find that I needed this testimony to be convinced of the reality of Lord Conyers's existence.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1852

Hear the cricket. He seems to chirp from a new depth toward autumn, new lieferungs of the fall. See August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn.”); August 4, 1856 ("Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

I smell the fragrant life-everlasting, now almost out; another scent that reminds me of the autumn.See August 4, 1851 (“ I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Aromatic Herbs

The singular thought-inducing stillness after a gentle rain like this. See August 7, 1853 (“When I came forth it was cloudy and from time to time drizzling weather, . . .  soothing and inducing reflection. The river is dark and smooth these days, reflecting no brightness but dark clouds, and the goldfinch is heard twittering over; though presently a thicker mist or mizzle falls, and you are prepared for rain. The river and brooks look late and cool. The stillness and the shade enable you to collect and concentrate your thoughts.”)

A small lake in the woods. See Walden (“This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had recently been cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue.”) [a view from Heywood's Peak? ~ see walden pond a history p. 109]

As early as Hypericum corymbosum. Spotted St. John's-wort. See .July 9, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum, not yet ");July 11, 1854 ("Hypericum corymbosum in front of Lee's Cliff, a day or two"); July 21, 1856 ("Hypericum corymbosum, a day or two. The small hypericums are open only in the forenoon. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Most huckleberries

 blueberries and  blackberries 

are in their prime now.

Small lake in the woods

full of light and reflections

as the wood thrush sings.

 A gentle rain and 

a lowering sky, but still 

I hear the cricket.

The little bees sleep

amid clethra in the rain

yet are not aroused.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, New lieferungs of the fall.

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 © 2009-2025

Signs of fall.

August 9. 

Sunday. 

I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1857

Blackbirds flying in flocks.  See August 18, 1858 ("See large flocks of blackbirds, blackish birds with chattering notes. It is a fine sight when you can look down on them just as they are settling on the ground with outspread wings, — a hovering flock.");   September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the to
p of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"). See also October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.")

The shrilling of my alder locust. See August 9, 1851 ("Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust.") and August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn. . . ."); August 4, 1856 ( "Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.");  August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning."); August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.");   August 12, 1858 (“Hear what I have called the alder locust (?) as I return over the causeway, and probably before this.”); August 13, 1860 ("Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust."); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

 

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

A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side.

August 26

Tuesday. More wind and quite cold this morning, but very bright and sparkling, autumn-like air, reminding of frosts to be apprehended, also tempting abroad to adventure. The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. 

So about 9 a. m. up river to Fair Haven Pond. 

The flooded meadow, where the grasshoppers cling to the grass so thickly, is alive with swallows skimming just over the surface amid the grass-tops and apparently snapping up insects there. Are they catching the grasshoppers as they cling to bare poles? (I see the swallows equally thick there at 5 p. m. when I return also.) 

River slowly falling. The most conspicuous weed rising above the water is the wool-grass, with its great, rich, seedy heads, which rise from a few inches to a foot above at present, as I push over the uncut meadows. 

I see many white lilies fairly and freshly in bloom after all this flood, though it looks like a resurrection.

The wind is northwest, apparently by west, and I sail before it and under Hubbard's Bridge. 

The red maples of Potter's Swamp show a dull-purple blush and sometimes a low scarlet bough, the effect evidently of the rain ripening them. 

Rice told me about their crossing the causeway from Wayland to Sudbury some sixty years ago in a freshet which he could just remember, in a half-hogs head tub, used for scalding pigs, having nailed some boards on the bottom to keep it from upsetting. It was too deep for a team. 

We begin to apprehend frosts before the melons are ripe! 

A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. Again he flies, and alights on the hard Conantum side, where at length I detect him standing far away stake-like (his body concealed), eying me and depending on his stronger vision. 

The desmodium flowers are pure purple, rose-purple in the morning when quite fresh, excepting the two green spots. The D. rotundifolium also has the two green (or in its case greenish) spots on its very large flower. These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them. The round-leafed desmodium has sometimes seven pods and large flowers still fresh. 

The Lespedeza Stuvei is very abundant on Black berry Steep, two and a half to three feet high. It has a looser top and less dense spikes than the hirta. It gives a pink hue to the hillside. The L. violacea is smaller and much more violet, the hirta more white. Galium pilosum still common; and Desmodium acuminatum still by rock on Blackberry Steep. This to be added to the desmodiums of this place. 

As I stand there, a young male goldfinch darts away with a twitter from a spear thistle top close to my side, and, alighting near, makes frequent returns as near to me and the thistle as it dares pass, not yet knowing man well enough to fear him. 

I rest and take my lunch on Lee's Cliff, looking toward Baker Farm. 

July 20, 2018

What is a New England landscape this sunny August day? A weather-painted house and barn, with an orchard by its side, in midst of a sandy field surrounded by green woods, with a small blue lake on one side. A sympathy between the color of the weather-painted house and that of the lake and sky. I speak not of a country road between its fences, for this house lies off one, nor do I commonly approach them from this side. The weather-painted house. This is the New England color, homely but fit as that of a toadstool. What matter though this one has not been inhabited for thirty years? 

Methinks I hear the crow of a cock come up from its barn-yard. I think I hear the pine warbler's note in the woods behind me. Hear a plain phebe note from a chickadee. 

Bluets still. 

Epilobium down flies abundantly on hillsides. 

I gather a bundle of pennyroyal; it grows largest and rankest high and close under these rocks, amid the loose stones. I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed. 

Sail across to Bee Tree Hill. This hillside, laid bare two years ago and partly last winter, is almost covered with the Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime. It grows large and rank, two feet high. On one I count seventeen central flowers withered, one hundred and thirty in bloom, and half as many buds. 

As I looked down from the hilltop over the sprout-land, its rounded grayish tops amid the bushes I mistook for gray, lichen-clad rocks, such was its profusion and harmony with the scenery, like hoary rocky hilltops amid bushes. There were acres of it, densely planted. Also erechthites as abundant and rank in many places there as if it had been burnt over! So it does not necessarily imply fire. I thought I was looking down on gray, lichen-clad rocky summits on which a few bushes thinly grew. These rocks were asters, single ones a foot over, many prostrate, and making a gray impression. 

Many leaves of shrubs are crisp and withered and fallen there, though as yet no drought nor frost. Nothing but rain can have done it. Aspen leaves are blackened. Stonecrop still. Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf. Galium triflorum still. See a great many young oaks and shrub oaks stripped by caterpillars of different kinds now.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal August 26, 1856


The fall cricket — or is it alder locust? — sings the praises of the day. See August 26, 1860 ("The shrilling of the alder locust is the solder that welds these autumn days together."); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

A blue heron sails away from a pine at Holden Swamp shore and alights on the meadow above. See note to August 19, 1858 ("Blue herons, which have bred or been bred not far from us (plainly), are now at leisure, or are impelled to revisit our slow stream. I have not seen the last since spring. "); August 22, 1858 ("See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them . . . They found me, though I did not them. See note to August 19, 1856 ("I spent my afternoon among the desmodiums and lespedezas, sociably.")

I gather a bundle of pennyroyal . . . I tie my bundle with the purple bark of the poke-weed. See August 11, 1853 ("Evening draws on while I am gathering bundles of pennyroyal on the further Conantum height. I find it amid the stubble mixed with blue-curls and, as fast as I get my hand full, tie it into a fragrant bundle.”);  August 13, 1852 ("Pennyroyal abundant in bloom. I find it springing from the soil lodged on large rocks in sprout-lands, and gather a little bundle, which scents my pocket for many days.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A young male goldfinch darts away with a twitter from a spear thistle top close to my side, and, alighting near, makes frequent returns as near to me and the thistle as it dares. See  August 28, 1856  ("A goldfinch twitters away from every thistle now, and soon returns to it when I am past.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

A sympathy between the color of the weather-painted house and that of the lake and sky. The weather-painted house. This is the New England color. See April 3, 1858  ("In the hazy atmosphere yesterday we could hardly see Garfield's old unpainted farmhouse."); April 24, 1857 ("That is a very New England landscape. Buttrick's yellow farmhouse near by is in harmony with it."); June 15, 1859 (“A regular old-fashioned country house, long and low, one story unpainted, with a broad green field, half orchard, for all yard between it and the road, — a part of the hill side, — and much June-grass before it. This is where the men who save the country are born and bred.”); November 26, 1857 ("Minott's is a small, square, one-storied and unpainted house, with a hipped roof and at least one dormer window, a third the way up the south side of a long hill")

Aster macrophyllus, now in its prime . . . making a gray impression.  See  August 30, 1853 ("I am quite bewildered by the beauty and variety of the asters, now in their prime here. Why so many asters and goldenrods now?") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Asters in August

Another monster aphis on a huckleberry leaf. See August 18, 1856 ("Saw yesterday and some days before a monster aphis some five eighths of an inch long on a huckleberry leaf.")

Sunny August day –

weather-painted house and barn

New England color.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A weather-painted house and barn

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-560826