The year is but a succession of days,
and I see that I could assign some office to each day
which, summed up, would be the history of the year.
This cold white twilight
and bright starlight makes us think
of wood for winter.
For a week or so the evenings have been sensibly longer, and I am beginning to throw off my summer idleness. September 11, 1854
Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. A great change since the 6th, when the heat was so oppressive. September 11, 1853
Signs of frost last night in M. Miles's cleared swamp. Potato vines black. September 11, 1853
This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon. September 11, 1859
How much fresher some flowers look in rainy weather! When I thought they were about done, they appear to revive, and moreover their beauty is enhanced, as if by the contrast of the louring atmosphere with their bright colors. Such are the purple gerardia and the Bidens cernua. September 11, 1852
Bidens cernua, or nodding burr marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays) in Heywood Brook, i. e. beggar- tick. September 11, 1851 The purple gerardia and blue-curls are interesting for their petals strewn about, beaten down by the rain. September 11, 1852
Many a brook I look into is strewn with the purple petals of the gerardia, whose stalk is not obvious in the bank. September 11, 1852
Solidago puberula apparently in prime, with the S. stricta, near gerardia oaks. September 11, 1857
My old S. stricta (early form) must be S. arguta var. juncea. It is now done. September 11, 1857
To my surprise I find, by the black oaks at the sand hole east of Clamshell, the Solidago rigida, apparently in prime or a little past. September 11, 1857
Two-leaved Solomon Seal berries
(Canada mayflower)
September 11, 2023
September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor. September 11, 1859
The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red. September 11, 1859
The Rhus Toxicodendron berries are now ripe and greenish-yellow, and some already shrivelled, over bare rocks. September 11, 1859
By the pool in Hubbard's Grove, I see tall tupelos, all dotted with the now ripe (apparently in prime) small oval purple berries, two or three together on the end of slender peduncles, amid the reddening leaves. September 11, 1859
The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard's Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago, appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod. September 11, 1851
The clusters of the Viburnum Lentago berries, now in their prime, are exceedingly and peculiarly handsome, and edible withal. These are drooping, like the Cornus sericea cymes. Each berry in the cyme is now a fine, clear red on the exposed side and a distinct and clear green on the opposite side. Many are already purple, and they turn in your hat, but they are handsomest when thus red and green. September 11, 1859
Our cornel (the common) with berries blue one side, whitish the other, appears to be either the Cornus sericea or C. stolonifera of Gray, i. e. the silky, or the red-osier cornel (osier rouge). September 11, 1851
The large clusters of the Smilacina racemosa berries, four or five inches long, of whitish berries a little smaller than a pea, finely marked and dotted with vermilion or bright red, are very conspicuous. I do not chance to see any ripe. September 11, 1859
No fruit is handsomer than the acorn. I see but few fallen yet, and they are all wormy. Very pretty, especially, are the white oak acorns, three raying from one centre. September 11, 1859We have had no rain for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in them . . . Are they not replenished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the grass, saved from evaporation? What wells for the birds! September 11, 1851
Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon. September 11, 1855
I see some yellow butterflies and others occasionally and singly only. September 11, 1851
Muskrat-houses begun. September 11, 1855
This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening. It makes us think of wood for the winter. September 11, 1854
This twilight is succeeded by a brighter starlight than heretofore. September 11, 1854
This and the last four or five nights have been perhaps the most sultry in the year thus far. September 11, 1851
*****
August 18, 1854 ("We can walk across the Great Meadows now in any direction. They are quite dry. Even the pitcher-plant leaves are empty.")
August 21, 1854 ("In Hubbard's meadow, between the two woods, I can not find a pitcher-plant with any water in it.")
August 22, 1854 ("I find at length a pitcher-plant with a spoonful of water in it. It must be last night's dew.")
August 25, 1852 ("One of those serious and normal storms ~ not a shower which you can see through, not a transient cloud that drops rain ~ something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind.") August 26, 1859 ("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")
August 27, 1856 ("There are many wild-looking berries about now.")
August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening.")
August 30, 1853 ("Viburnum Lentago berries are now common and handsome")
September 1, 1854 ("The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white.")
September 1, 1854 ("The Viburnum Lentago are just fairly begun to have purple cheeks.")
September 1, 1856 ("Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome. A few medeola berries ripe.")
September 1, 1856 ("Red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome.")
September 2, 1853 ("The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground . . . The medeola berries are now dull glossy and almost blue-black; about three, on slender threads one inch long, arising in the midst of the cup formed by the purple bases of the whorl of three upper leaves.")
September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower.")
September 3, 1856 (A singular and pleasing contrast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. ")
September 4, 1859 (See a very large mass of spikenard berries fairly ripening, eighteen inches long")
September 3, 1853 ("Now is the season for those comparatively rare but beautiful wild berries which are not food for man.. . .Berries which are as beautiful as flowers, but far less known, the fruit of the flower.")
September 3, 1856 (“The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea.”)
September 3, 1856 ("Gather four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, — elliptical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, — green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, — i. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity.")
September 4, 1857 ("Cornus sericea berries begin to ripen")
September 4, 1859 ("The Cornus sericea and C. paniculata are rather peculiar for turning to a dull purple on the advent of cooler weather and frosts,") September 6, 1854 ("I think I may say that large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red.")
September 6, 1856 ("Solidago arguta very common, apparently in prime, with sharp-toothed, more or less elliptic leaves and slender terminal drooping racemes; size of S. stricta.")
September 7, 1856 ("Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook . . . with the sericea.")
September 7, 1857 ("Our first slight frost in some places this morning. Northwest wind to-day and cool weather; such weather as we have not had for a long time, a new experience, which arouses a corresponding breeze in us.")
September 10, 1858 ("A musquash-house begun.")
September 10, 1860 ("There was a frost this morning.")
September 12, 1851 ("Bidens cernua, nodding burr-marigold, with five petals")
September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds")September 13, 1852("The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook.") September 12, 1853 ("The Smilacina racemosa berries are well red now")
September 13, 1856 ("The Viburnum Lentago, which I left not half turned red when I went up-country a week ago, are now quite black-purple and shrivelled like raisins on my table, and sweet to taste, though chiefly seed.") September 14, 1852 ("This morning the first frost")
September 14, 1854 ("The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory,. . . Full of the sun. It needs a name.")
September 15, 1856 ("Early Solidago stricta (that is, arguta) done ")
September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed")
September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens, or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.")
September 20, 1857 ("This is our first fall rain, and makes a dividing line between the summer and fall.")
September 26, 1857 ("Solidago rigida, just done, within a rod southwest of the oak")
September 27, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.")
October 15, 1851 ("The muskrat-houses appear now for the most part to be finished. ")
November 16, 1852 ("At Holden's Spruce Swamp. The water is frozen in the pitcher-plant leaf.")
February 11, 1858 ("The water in the pitcher-plant leaves is frozen.")
*****
See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau:
If you make the least correct
observation of nature this year,
you will have occasion to repeat it
with illustrations the next,
and the season and life itself is prolonged.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022
tinyurl.com/HDT11SEPT
