Nightshade berries begin to ripen

July 28. 

7 A. M. – To Azalea Brook.

The mikania is hardly out yet; like the eupatoriums, shows its color long before it opens.

The vernonia not quite yet.

The lilies, though a little less numerous, appear freer from insects than at first. Their pads not so much eaten as those of the nuphar.

The pickerel-weed has passed its prime.

The pettymorel at the brook not out, though that by the Corner Spring has berries.

P. M. – To Clematis Brook via Lee's with Mr. Conway.

Tells me of a kind of apple tree with very thick leaves near the houses in Virginia called the tea-tree, under which they take tea, even through an ordinary shower, it sheds the rain so well, and there the table constantly stands in warm weather.

The Gerardia flava in the hickory grove behind Lee's Cliff, some days. Answers apparently in every respect to the above, yet its lower leaves are like narrow white oak leaves. Have I seen the G. quercifolia? 

Is that the Cicuta bulbifera just out at Clematis Brook, with decompound leaves and linear leafets fringe toothed?? 

That low hieracium, hairy, especially the lower part, with several hairy, obovate or oblanceolate leaves, remotely, very slightly, toothed, and glandular hairs on peduncles and calyx, a few heads, some days at least. Vide herbarium.

Saw lower leaves of the white vervain turned a reddish lake or claret.

Nightshade berries begin to ripen, — to be red.

Is that rather coarse flower about Mrs. Brooks's house (escaped from cultivation), called Bouncing Bet, and which has been open ten days or more, Saponaria Vaccaria, — cow-herb?

The mullein pink is also escaped from gardens thereabouts.

Aster linariifolius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1853

The Gerardia flava in the hickory grove behind Lee's Cliff .See July 28, 1856 (Gerardia flava, apparently several days.) See also July 22, 1854 ("Gerardia flava, apparently two or three days, Lupine Hillside up railroad, near fence") [Gerardia flava now know as Aureolaria flava (smooth false foxglove)]

That low hieracium, hairy, especially the lower part, with several hairy, obovate or oblanceolate leaves. some days at least.  See July 28, 1852 ("What is that slender hieracium or aster-like plant in woods on Corner road with lanceolate, coarsely feather-veined leaves, sessile and remotely toothed; minute, clustered, imbricate buds (?) or flowers and buds? Panicled hieracium?") See also  July 31, 1856 ("Hieracium paniculatum by Gerardia quercifolia path in woods under Cliffs, two or three days."); August 21, 1851 ("Hieracium paniculatum, a very delicate and slender hawkweed. I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Hawkweeds (hieracium)

Saw lower leaves of the white vervain turned a reddish lake or claret. See August 6, 1853 ("lower leaves of some catnip and a white vervain have turned.")

Nightshade berries begin to ripen, — to be red. See August 5, 1856 ("Nightshade berries, how long?"); August 20, 1851 ("Where the brook issues from the pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe."); September 26, 1859 ("I do not know any clusters more graceful and beautiful than these drooping cymes of scarlet or translucent cherry-colored elliptical berries"); October 15, 1859 ("Solanum Dulcamara berries linger over water but mostly are shrivelled")

Aster linariifolius. See July 29, 1852 ("That common rigid narrow-leaved faint-purplish aster in dry woods by shrub oak path, Aster linariifolius of Bigelow, but it is not savory leaved. I do not find it in Gray. "); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Savory-leaved aster

July 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 28

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

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.

August 29

August 29, 2019

I hear in the street this morning a goldfinch sing part of a sweet strain.

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field. 

When the very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights, then, too, the first cooler airs of autumn begin to waft my sweetness on the desert airs of summer. Now, too, poets nib their pens afresh. I scent their first-fruits in the cool evening air of the year. 

By the coolness the experience of the summer is condensed and matured, whether our fruits be pumpkins or grapes. 

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples. 

I find that the water-bugs (Gyrinus) keep amid the pads in open spaces along the sides of the river all day, and, at dark only, spread thence all over the river and gyrate rapidly. For food I see them eating or sucking at the wings and bodies of dead devil's-needles which fall on the water, making them too gyrate in a singular manner. If one gets any such food, the others pursue him for it. 

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. 

P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. 

The vernonia is one of the most conspicuous flowers now where it grows, — a very rich color. It is some what past its prime; perhaps about with the red eupatorium. 

Botrychium lunarioides now shows its fertile frond above the shorn stubble in low grounds, but not shedding pollen. 

See the two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries, many of them ripe; also some ripe mitchella berries, contrasting with their very fresh green leaves. 

White cohush berries, apparently in prime, and the arum fruit. The now drier and browner (purplish- brown) looking rabbit's clover, whose heads collected would make a soft bed, is an important feature in the landscape; pussies some call them; more puffed up than before. 

The thorn bushes are most sere and yellowish-brown bushes now. 

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. 

The slate-colored spots or eyes — fungi — on several kinds of goldenrods are common now. 

The knife-shaped fruit of the ash has strewn the paths of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1859

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. See August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire . . .I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool") See also September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun"); September 17, 1858 (“Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings.”); September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)

The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off."); August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house");August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first.");

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.See November 14, 1853. ("October answers to that period in the life of man when . . . all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit".)

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. See September 3, 1858 ("See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad"); September 13, 1858 (""Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss") October 18, 1857 (" Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones.")

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. .See also Wikipedia (Solar Cycle 10 beginning in December 1855 and the Solar storm ( Carrington Event.) of September 1–2, 1859) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

So cool a morning 

that for the first time I move 

to sit in the sun.