A farmer in his field.

September 23

P. M. — Round by Clematis Brook.

The forget-me-not still.

I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow (Hubbard's), more full and bright than any flower.

The maples are mostly darker, the very few boughs that are turned, and the tupelo, which is reddening.

The ash is just beginning to turn.

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day.

I find huckleberries on Conantum still sound and blackening the bushes.

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon than one would expect!

Some acorns and hickory nuts on the ground, but they have not begun to shell.

Is it the nut of the Carya amara, with raised seams, but not bitter, that I perceive?

I suppose that is the Carya tomentosa, or mockernut hickory, with large rounded nuts on Lee's land.

The bitternuts (?), rubbed together, smell like varnish.

The sarothra in bloom.

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red, and their stems are slanted up-stream.

Almost all the yellow ones have disappeared.

September 23, 2018

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red.

The woodbine high on trees in the shade a delicate pink.

I gathered some haws very good to eat to-day. I think they must be the senelles of the Canadians.

Hamamelis Virginiana out, before its leaves fall.

A woodchuck out.

The waxwork not opened.

The "feathery tails" of the clematis fruit conspicuous and interesting now.

Yellow lily out (again?) in the pond-holes.

Passing a corn-field the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. Any of his acquaintances would. He was only a trifle more weather-beaten] than when I saw him last. His back being toward me, I missed nothing, and I thought to myself if I were a crow I should not fear the balance of him, at any rate.

In northern latitudes, where other edible fruits are scarce, they make an account of haws and bunch-berries.

The barberry bushes in Clematis Hollow are very beautiful now, with their wreaths of red or scarlet fruit drooping over a rock.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 23, 1852

The scarlet dogwood is the striking bush to-day. See note to September 25, 1852 ("The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.")

A blue-stemmed goldenrod, its stem and leaves red. See September 23, 1860 ("I see everywhere in the shady yew wood those pretty round-eyed fungus-spots on the upper leaves of the blue-stemmed goldenrod, contrasting with the few bright-yellow flowers above them, -- yellowish-white rings (with a slate-colored centre), surrounded by green and then dark."); See also November 10, 1858 ("In the path below the Cliff, I see some blue-stemmed goldenrod turned yellow as well as purple.")

How much longer a mile appears between two blue mountain peaks thirty or more miles off in the horizon. See 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.'); May 17, 1858 ("I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influence."); August 14, 1854 (“I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon.— to behold and commune with something grander than man. “); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction. . . ., and I see with new pleasure to distant hillsides and farmhouses . . and to the mountains in the horizon."); October 20, 1852 ("This is an advantage of mountains in the horizon: they show you fair weather from the midst of foul."); October 22, 1857 ("But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon! Do we ever give thanks for it? "); November 4, 1857 ("But those grand and glorious mountains, how impossible to remember daily that they are there, and to live accordingly! They are meant to be a perpetual reminder to us, pointing out the way."): 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.")  

The wind from the north has turned the white lily pads wrong side up, so that they look red. See June 29, 1852 ("The wind exposes the red undersides of the white lily pads. This is one of the aspects of the river now."); August 24,1854 ("The bright crimson-red under sides of the great white lily pads, turned up by the wind in broad fields on the sides of the stream, are a great ornament to the stream. It is not till August, methinks, that they are turned up conspicuously.”)

Carya amara, bitternut -- Carya tomentosa, mockernut hickory,( North American hickories include:

·        Carya glabra – pignut hickory

·       Carya laciniosa - shagbark hickory

·     Carya ovata – shagbark hickory

·      Carya texana  black hickory

·      Carya tomentosa  – mockernut hickory

·      Carya cordiformis (amara)  – bitternut hickory)

 

 

What is that small conyza-like aster,?

July 19. 

Clematis has been open a day or two. 

The alisma will open to-morrow or next day. 

This morning a fog and cool.

What is that small conyza-like aster, with flaccid linear leaves, in woods near Boiling Spring? 

Some woodbine, cultivated, apparently long since flowered. The same of some on Lee's Cliff, where it is early.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 19, 1853

Clematis has been open a day or two. See July 14, 1853 ('The Clematis  [by the Heywood Brook](near the water-plantain) will open in a day or two.")

This morning a fog and cool. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. . . .These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); July 22, 1854 ("Fogs almost every morning now."); July 25, 1852 ("the sun having risen, I see great wreaths of fog far northeast, revealing the course of the river.")

What is that small conyza-like aster, with flaccid linear leaves?. See July 18, 1854 ("Methinks the asters and goldenrods begin, like the early ripening leaves, with midsummer heats."); July 26, 1853 ("I mark again, about this time when the first asters open. . . This the afternoon of the year."); July 28, 1852 ("Goldenrod and asters have fairly begun; i. e. there are several kinds of each out. ") [Note; Conyza (horseweed, butterweed or fleabane) is a genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family.

Woodbine, long since flowered. See September 12, 1851 ("What we call woodbine is the Vitis hederacea, or common creeper, or American ivy.")

A botanist in pursuit of grasses tramples down oaks in his walk.

September 9. 

P. M. — To Waban Cliff. 

A very hot day, — 90°, as I hear. Yesterday was hot, too. 

Now it is about time to gather elder-berries. 

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. 

What is that short squeaking note heard from time to time from amid the weeds on the west side the river at Hubbard’s Bath? 

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There especially stands the brown-headed wool-grass. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks.

(Was it the note of the last I heard?)

Heard a short plover-like note from a bird flying high across the river. 

Watched a little dipper some ten rods off with my glass, but I could see no white on the breast. It was all black and brownish, and head not enlarged. Who knows how many little dippers are sailing and sedulously diving now along the edge of the pickerel-weed and the button-bushes on our river, unsuspected by most? 

This hot September afternoon all may be quiet amid the weeds, but the dipper, and the bittern, and the yellow legs, and the blue heron, and the rail are silently feeding there. At length the walker who sits meditating on a distant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge: Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water. 

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncaceoa and Gramineoe; even; i. e., I find that when I am looking for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. 

How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk. 

Bidens cernua, how long?


The river is about at its height to-day or yesterday. Much bur-reed and heart-leaf is floating and washed up, apparently the first important contribution to the river wrack. The sportsman will paddle a boat now five or six miles, and wade in water up to his knees, being out all day without his dinner, and think himself amply compensated if he bags two or three yellow-legs. The most persistent and sacrificing endeavors are necessary to success in any direction. 

Woodbine scarlet, like a brilliant scarf on high, wrapped around the stem of a green tree. By a blush betrays where it hangs upon an elm. 

I find an abundance of beaked hazelnuts at Blackberry Steep, one to three burs together, but, gathering them, I get my fingers full of fine shining bristles, while the common hazel burs are either smooth or covered with a softer glandular down; i. e., its horns are brazen tipped. 

Under the rocks near the slippery elm, the Gymnostichum Hystrix, bottle-brush grass, hedgehog grass, long done. 

Rice says he saw two meadow-hens when getting his hay in Sudbury some two months ago, and that they breed there. They kept up a peculiar note. My egg (named Sept. 7th) was undoubtedly a meadow-hen’s Rallus Virginiana. 

R. says that he has caught pigeons which had ripe grapes in their crops long before any were ripe here, and that they came from the south west. 

We live in the same world with the Orientals, far off as they may seem. Nature is the same here to a chemist’s tests. 

The weeping willow (Salix Babylonica) will grow here. The peach, too, has been transplanted, and is agreeable to our palates. So are their poetry and philosophy near and agreeable to us.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1858

It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants. A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. See  November 18 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going.".); September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye."); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye."); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”); December 11, 1855 ("It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.”); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.") July 2, 1857 (“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”); October 13, 1857 (“We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there.”); November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them”) Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”)

Many Viola cucullata have opened again. See September 4, 1856 (“Viola pedata again.”); September 10, 1857 ("I see lambkill ready to bloom a second time.”); September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”); and note to October 10, 1856 ("Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.”)

There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks. See Walden (“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”); Walking (“A town is saved by the woods and swamps that surround it.”); January 22, 1852 (“I see, one mile to two miles distant on all sides from my window, the woods, which still encircle our New England towns. They still bound almost every view. They have been driven off only so far. Where still wild creatures haunt. How long will these last?”)

I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me.

September 27. 

I am surprised to find that, yesterday having been a sudden very warm day, the peaches have mellowed suddenly and wilted, and I find many more fallen than even after previous rains. Better if ripened more gradually. 

How out of all proportion to the value of an idea, when you come to one, — in Hindoo literature, for instance, — is the historical fact about it, — the when, where, etc., it was actually expressed, and what precisely it might signify to a sect of worshippers! Any thing that is called history of India — or of the world — is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless.

P. M. — To Lee's Cliff by land. 

Small red maples in low ground have fairly begun to burn for a week. It varies from scarlet to crimson. It looks like training-day in the meadows and swamps. They have run up their colors. A small red maple has grown, perchance, far away on some moist hill side, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faith fully discharged the duties of a maple there, all winter and summer, neglected none of its economies, added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady growth all summer, and is nearer heaven than in the spring, never having gone gadding abroad; and now, in this month of September, when men are turned travellers, hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the lakes, – in this month of travelling, — this modest maple, having ripened its seeds, still with out budging an inch, travels on its reputation, runs up its scarlet flag on that hillside, to show that it has finished its summer work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. Thus that modest worth which no scrutiny could have detected when it was most industrious, is, by the very tint of its maturity, by its very blushes, revealed at last to the most careless and distant observer. It rejoices in its existence; its reflections are unalloyed. It is the day of thanksgiving with it. At last, its labors for the year being consummated and every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum. In its hue is no regret nor pining. Its leaves have been asking their parent from time to time in a whisper, “When shall we redden?” It has faith fully husbanded its sap, and builded without babbling nearer and nearer to heaven. Long since it committed its seeds to the winds and has the satisfaction of knowing perhaps that a thousand little well-behaved and promising maples of its stock are already established in business somewhere. It deserves well of Mapledom. It has afforded a shelter to the wandering bird. Its autumnal tint shows how it has spent its summer; it is the hue of its virtue.

These burning bushes stand thus along the edge of the meadows, and I distinguish them afar upon all the hillsides, here and there. Her virtues are as scarlet. 

The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. 

White birches have fairly begun to yellow, and blackberry vines here and there in sunny places look like a streak of blood on the grass. 

Bass, too, fairly begun to yellow. 

Solidago nemoralis nearly done. 

I sit on the hillside at Miles Swamp. A woodbine investing the leading stem of an elm in the swamp quite to its top is seen as an erect slender red column through the thin and yellowing foliage of the elm, – a very pretty effect. I see some small woodbine leaves in the shade of a delicate cherry-color, bordering on pink.

As I sit there I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. Perhaps it is both because the young are grown and their food, the small birds, are flying in flocks and are abundant. I need only sit still a few minutes on any spot which overlooks the river meadows, before I see some black circling mote beating along, circling along the meadow's edge, now lost for a moment as it turns edgewise in a peculiar light, now reappearing further or nearer. 

Witch-hazel two thirds yellowed. 

Huckleberries are still abundant and quite plump on Conantum, though they have a somewhat dried taste. 

It is most natural, i. e. most in accordance with the natural phenomena, to suppose that North America was discovered from the northern part of the Eastern Continent, for a study of the range of plants, birds, and quadrupeds points to a connection on that side. Many birds are common to the northern parts of both continents. Even the passenger pigeon has flown across there. And some European plants have been detected on the extreme northeastern coast and islands, which do not extend inland. Men in their migrations obey in the main the same law.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 27, 1857

How out of all proportion to the value of an idea . . . is the historical fact about it. . . Any thing that is called history . . . is impertinent beside any real poetry or inspired thought which is dateless. See December 16, 1837 ("Mere accumulators of facts . . . are like those plants growing in dark forests, which 'put forth only leaves instead of blossoms.'"); November 9, 1851 ("I, too, would fain set down something beside facts."); February 18, 1852 ("I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant . . . I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all."); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth”)

I see the shadow of a hawk flying above and behind me. I think I see more hawks nowadays. See September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? . . . I detect the transit of the first by his shadow on the rock, and look toward the sun for him.”); April 29, 1852 (“Discover a hawk over my head by his shadow on the ground.”)

Every leaf ripened to its full, it flashes out conspicuous to the eye of the most casual observer, with all the virtue and beauty of a maple, – Acer rubrum. See September 27, 1851 ("The maples by the riverside look very green yet, have not begun to blush, nor are the leaves touched by frost. Not so on the uplands"); 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."); September 27, 1858 ("Red maples now fairly glow along the shore.") See also September 1, 1852 ("Across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three birches diverge, at the point of a promontory next the water, I see two or three small maples already scarlet."); September 1, 1853 ("Some large maples along the river are beginning to redden."); September 12, 1858 ("Some small red maples by water begun to redden."); 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 20, 1857 ("A great many small red maples in Beck Stow's Swamp are turned quite crimson, when all the trees around are still perfectly green. It looks like a gala day there.")

The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever. See September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered."); September 2, 1854 ("The interrupted fern begins to yellow.")

A walk on the beach

July 11.

See young piping plover running in a troop on the beach like peetweets.

Patches of shrub oaks, bayberry, beach plum, and early wild roses, overrun with woodbine. What a splendid show of wild roses, whose sweetness is mingled with the aroma of the bayberry! 

A bar wholly made within three months; first exposed about first of May; as I paced, now seventy five rods long and six or eight rods wide at high water, and bay within six rods wide. The bay has extended twice as far, but is filled up. 

upland plover 

The upland plover hovers almost stationary in the air with a quivering note of alarm. Above, dark-brown interspersed with white, darkest in rear; gray-spotted breast, white beneath; bill dark above, yellowish at base beneath, and legs yellowish. 

Bank at lighthouse one hundred and seventy feet on the slope, perpendicular one hundred and ten; say shelf slopes four and ordinary tide-fall is nine, makes one hundred and twenty-three in all. Saw sand bank south fifteen to twenty-five feet higher. 

Mackerel-fishing not healthy like cod-fishing; hard work packing the mackerel, stooping over.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1855

Upland plover. "In Massachusetts, and to the eastward of that state, this species is best known by the name of 'Upland Plover,'”   ~ J. J. Audubon  [Bertram’s sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda),  now known as the Upland Sandpiper.]

July 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 11

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

Yellow butterflies in the damp road.

September 3.

September 3, 2023

Fair weather and a clear atmosphere after two days of mizzling, cloudy, and rainy weather and some smart showers at daylight and in the night. The street is washed hard and white. 

P. M. —- With Minot Pratt into Carlisle.

Woodbine berries purple. 

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. 

Pratt showed me a tobacco flower, long and tubular, slightly like a datura. 

In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described.

Close to the left-hand side of bridle-road, about a hundred rods south of the oak, a bayberry bush without fruit, probably a male one. 

It made me realize that this was only a more distant and elevated sea-beach and that we were within reach of marine influences. My thoughts suffered a sea-turn.

North of the oak (four or five rods), on the left of the bridle-road in the pasture next to Mason’s, tried to find the white hardback still out, but it was too late. 

Found the mountain laurel out again, one flower, close sessile on end of this year’s shoot. There were numerous blossom-buds expanding, and they may possibly open this fall.

A white hardback out of bloom by a pile of stones (on which I put another) in Robbins’s field, and a little south of it a clump of red huckleberries.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1854

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. See July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places . . . I do not know what attracts them thus to sit near together , like a fleet in a haven; why they collect in groups.") See also July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road”); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed"); July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road.");  October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”); October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

September 3.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 3

Again see fleets of 

yellow butterflies in the 

damp road after rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Yellow butterflies in the damp road

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540903