The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome

September 25

The river has risen again considerably (this I believe the fourth time), owing to the late copious rains. This before the farmers have succeeded in their late attempt to get their meadow-hay after all. It had not got down before this last rain but to within some eighteen inches, at least, of the usual level in September. 

P. M. — To Harrington road. 

A golden-crowned thrush runs off, a few feet at a time, on hillside on Harrington road, as if she had a nest still! 

The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome. Some of the Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line between Tarbell and T. Wheeler beyond brook are smaller, stale, and not good at all. 

The urtica just beyond Widow Hosmer's barn appears the same with that I called U. gracilis (?) in Brattleboro.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1856

The river has risen again . . . before the farmers have succeeded in their late attempt to get their meadow-hay . . . See August 24, 1856 ("The river meadows probably will not be mown this year. I can hardly get under the stone bridge without striking my boat.”)

A golden-crowned thrush runs off . . . as if she had a nest still! See June 18, 1854 ("Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been.”); August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the . . . oven-bird, etc . cease?”); August 23, 1858 ("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 ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Oven-bird

The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome. See September 23, 1852 ("I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day."); September 24, 1859 ("Those thorns by Shattuck's barn, now nearly leafless, have hard green fruit as usual.")

Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line. [Crataegus crus-galli (cockspur thorn) is a species of hawthorn.]  See  May 29, 1853 ("The Cratægus Crus-Galli this side the Holden place on left, probably yesterday, thorns three inches long, flowers with anthers not conspicuously red.");June 10, 1856 ("The Crataegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom”); March 16, 1855 ("At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn”).

The urtica just beyond Widow Hosmer's barn appears the same with that I called U. gracilis (?) [Slender Stinging Nettle] in Brattleboro. See September 21, 1856 ("Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

September 25. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 25

A golden-crowned thrush 

runs off a few feet as if 

she had a nest still.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A golden-crowned thrush 

 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-560925

The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes.

September 7

Sunday.

At Brattleboro, Vt. a. m. — Climbed the hill behind Mr. Addison Brown's. 

The leaves of the Tiarella cordifolia very abundant in the woods, but hardly sharp-lobed. 

Also observed the leaves of the Hepatica triloba. 

Was that Sium lineare in the pool on the hilltop? Oakes allows only S. latifolium to grow in Vermont. The seeds are apparently ribbed like ours. (Vide press.) 

Found the lemna mantling that pool. Mrs. Brown has found it in flower there. 

Flowering dogwood on hill. 

P. M. — Up the bank of the Connecticut to West River, up that to a brook, and up that nearly to hospital. 

The Connecticut, though unusually high (several feet more than usual), looks low, there being four or five or six rods of bare gravel on each side, and the bushes and weeds covered with clayey soil from a freshet. Not a boat to be seen on it. The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes. It looks narrow as well as shallow. No doubt it is dwarfed by the mountain rising directly from it in front, which, as usual, looking nearer than it is, makes the opposite shore seem nearer. 

The Solidago Canadensis, and the smooth three - ribbed one, and nemoralis, etc., the helianthus (apparently decapetalus), and Aster or Diplopappus linariifolius, Vitis cordifolius (?) (now beginning to be ripe) are quite common along the bank. 

On a bank-side on West River, Urtica Canadensis, apparently in prime and going to seed, the same that Mr. Whitlow once recommended as a substitute for hemp. 

Near by the phryma, or lopseed, with still a few small rose-white flowers. I at first thought it a circrea. 

Plenty of harebells thereabouts, and, by the brook, Polygonum Virginianum, three feet high, mostly gone to seed. 

Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook (vide press), with the sericea. 

Aster macrophyllus much past prime.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1856