The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection.

September 7.

September 7, 2014

Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. 

The wind has gone down, and it is a still, warm night, and no mist. It is just after sundown. The moon not yet risen, one star, Jupiter, visible, and many bats over and about our heads, and small skaters creating a myriad dimples on the evening waters. 

There are many clouds about and a beautiful sunset sky, a yellowish golden sky, looking up the river. All this is reflected in the water. The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. 

The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. We seem withal to be floating directly into it. This the first autumnal sunset.

In harmony with this fair evening we paddle over the liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly toward those clouds in the sunset sky. We advance without  sound, by gentle influences, as the twilight gradually fades away. 

The height of the railroad bridge is doubled by the reflection, and the piers appear to rise from the lowest part of the reflection to the rail above, about fifty feet. We float directly under it, between the piers, as if in mid-air, not being able to distinguish the surface of the water, and look down more than twenty feet to the reflected flooring through whose intervals we see the starlit sky. The ghostly piers stretch downward on all sides, and only the angle made by their meeting the real ones betrays the water surface.

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all. The trees and hills are distinctly black between us and the moon, and the water black or gleaming accordingly. 

It is dry and warm. Above the Cliffs we hear one or two owls at a distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 7, 1854


Paddle to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. See May 8, 1857 ("The full moon rises, and I paddle by its light."); July 12, 1859 ("In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs.")

The reflected shadow of the Hill is black as night, and we seem to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reach it at all .See June 16, 1852 ("Owing to the reflections of the distant woods and hills, you seem to be paddling into a vast hollow country, doubly novel and interesting.") See also November 2, 1857("I think that most men, as farmers, hunters, fishers, etc., walk along a river's bank, or paddle along its stream, without seeing the reflections.")

Paddling without sound

toward clouds in the sunset sky

as the twilight fades.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  The beauty of the sunset

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-540907

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow

September 6.

 September 5, 2016

Warm weather again, and sultry nights the last two. The last a splendid moonlight and quite warm. 

6 A. M. —To Hill. 

The sun is rising directly over the eastern (magnetic east) end of the street. Not yet the equinox. 

In the afternoon, to the Hollowell place via Hubbard Bath, crossing the river. 

A very warm day, one of the warmest of the year. The water is again warmer than I should have believed; say an average summer warmth, yet not so warm as it has been. It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here.

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. 

The sarsaparilla leaves, green or reddish, are spotted with yellow eyes centred with reddish, or dull-reddish eyes with yellow iris. They have a very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay. 

The sessile-leaved bellwort is yellow, green, and brown, all together or separately. 

Some white oak leaves are covered with dull-yellow spots. 

I think I may say that large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red. 

9 P. M. — There is now approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. It must be twenty miles off, at least. for I can hardly hear the thunder at all. The almost incessant flashes reveal the form of the cloud, at least the upper and lower edge of it, but it stretches north and south along the horizon further than we see. Every minute I see the crinkled lightning, intensely bright, dart to earth or forkedly along the cloud. 

  

The flashes are, in fact, incessant for an hour or more, though lighting up different parts of the horizon,— now the edges of the cloud, now far along the horizon, —showing a clearer golden space beneath the cloud where rain is falling, through which stream tortuously to earth the brilliant bolts. We feel the rush of the cool wind while the thunder is yet scarcely audible. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1854

The water is again warmer than I should have believed . . . It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here. See September 2, 1854 ("Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably"); September 5, 1854 ("Bathe at the swamp white oak, the water again warmer than I expected. I see much thistle-down without the seed floating on the river and a hummingbird about a cardinal-flower over the water’s edge."); September 12, 1854 ("Bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm."); September 24, 1854 ("The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed. It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. See September 12, 1858 (" The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither. How rich in its decay!"); September 25, 1859 ("The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

A very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay. See August 19, 1856 ("Now for spotted aralia leaves, brown pupils with yellow iris amid the green. "); September 20, 1857 ("The early decaying and variegated spotted leaves of the Aralia nudicaulis , , , are very noticeable and interesting in our woods in early autumn, now and for some time. For more than a month it has been changing.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis)

The sessile-leaved bellwort [Uvularia sessilifolia] See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bellworts

Large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red. See September 1, 1856 ("The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting . . .turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a pleasant sweetish taste."); September 11, 1859 (" 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.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, False Solomon's Seal

Approaching from the west one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. See August 31, 1859 ("A thunder-cloud, . . . advancing rapidly across the sky . . . like an immense steamer holding its steady way to its port, with tremendous mutterings from time to time, a rush of cooler air, and hurried flight of birds") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Lightning

September 6.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  September 6

Incessant flashes

lighting up the horizon –

a rush of cool wind.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods

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/HDT9-6-1854

Now at sundown

September 5.

P. M. — Up Assabet to Sam Barrett’s Pond. 

September 05, 2014

The river rising probably. The river weeds are now much decayed. Almost all pads but the white lily have disappeared, and they are thinned, and in midstream those dense beds of weeds are so much thinned (potamogeton, heart-leaf, sparganium, etc., etc.) as to give one the impression of the river having risen, though it is not more than six inches higher on account of the rain.

This is a fall phenomenon. The river weeds, becoming rotten, though many are still green, fall or are loosened, the water rises, the winds come, and they are drifted to the shore, and the water is cleared.

During the drought I used to see Sam Wheeler’s men carting hogsheads of water from the river to water his shrubbery. They drove into the river, and, naked all but a coat and hat, they dipped up the water with a pail. Though a shiftless, it looked like an agreeable, labor that hot weather. 

Barrett shows me some very handsome pear-shaped cranberries, not uncommon, which may be a permanent variety different from the common rounded ones.

Bathe at the swamp white oak, the water again warmer than I expected. I see much thistle-down without the seed floating on the river and a hummingbird about a cardinal-flower over the water’s edge.

Just this side the rock, the water near the shore and pads is quite white for twenty rods, as with a white sawdust, with the exuviae of small insects about an eighth of an inch long, mixed with scum and weeds.

A soapwort gentian by river; remarkably early (?). The top has been bitten off !

I hear the tree-toad to-day. 

Now at sundown, a blue heron flaps away from his perch on an oak over the river before me, just above the rock. 

Hear locusts after sundown.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 5, 1854

Bathe at the swamp white oak, the water again warmer than I expected. See September 2, 1854 ("The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably."); September 6, 1854 ("The water is again warmer than I should have believed; "); September 12, 1854 ("Bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm."); September 24, 1854 ("It is now too cold to bathe with comfort") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

This is a fall phenomenon . . . the water is cleared. See September 24, 1854 ("The water begins to be clear of weeds, and the fishes are exposed.")

A soapwort gentian by river; remarkably early (?).  See  September 3, 1853 ("Why come these blue flowers thus late in the year?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Soapwort Gentian (Gentiana saponaria)

I hear the tree-toad to-day. See June 14, 1853 ("Suddenly a tree-toad in the overhanging woods begins, and another answers, and another, with loud, ringing notes such as I never heard before, and in three minutes they are all silent again."); October 18, 1859 ("Saw a tree-toad on the ground . . .It is marked on the back with black, somewhat in the form of the hylodes.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree-toad

A blue heron flaps away from his perch on an oak over the river. .See August 22, 1858 ("See one or two blue herons every day now, driving them far up or down the river before me"); 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. "); September 9, 1858 ("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.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

Hear locusts after sundown. See September 2, 1856 ("Frank Harding has caught a dog-day locust which lit on the bottom of my boat, in which he was sitting, and z-ed there"); September 7, 1858 ("It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny. . .and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard.")

September 5. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 5

Now at sundown

a blue heron flaps away 

from his perch on an oak 

over the river before me

just above the rock.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Now at sundown

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-540905

Walk to the view after sunset. we are treated to a light show of lightning. severe storms to northwest over Ottowa and Montreal, lighting the clouds, sometimes showing bolts, for perhaps an hour. A first quarter moon low in the south. we go down by the big house then bushwack to the fort. Windy. zphx September 5, 2014

Incessant flashes

lighting the edge of the cloud.

A rush of cool wind.

September 6, 1854

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea.

September 4.

Aster multiflorus.

Observed the under sides of a shrub willow by the river, lit by the rays of the rising sun, shining like silver or dewdrops.

September 4, 2018

Yet, when I stood nearer and looked down on them at a different angle, they were quite dull.

I have provided my little snapping turtle with a tub of water and mud, and it is surprising how fast he learns to use his limbs and this world. He actually runs, with the yolk still trailing from him, as if he had got new vigor from contact with the mud.

The insensibility and toughness of his infancy make our life, with its disease and low spirits, ridiculous.

He impresses me as the rudiment of a man worthy to inhabit the earth. He is born with a shell. That is symbolical of his toughness.

His shell being so rounded and sharp on the back at this age, he can turn over without trouble.

P. M. – To climbing fern.  Polygonum articulatum, apparently three or four days.

In the wood-paths I find a great many of the Castile-soap galls, more or less fresh. Some are saddled on the twigs. They are now dropping from the shrub oaks.

September 4, 2018

Is not Art itself a gall? Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her.

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea.  If the gall was anticipated when the oak was made, so was the canoe when the birch was made.

Genius stings Nature, and she grows according to its idea.

7.30.– To Fair Haven Pond by boat.

Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs (?) like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.

The high shore above the railroad bridge was very simple and grand, — first the bluish sky with the moon and a few brighter stars, then the near high level bank like a distant mountain ridge or a dark cloud in the eastern horizon, then its reflection in the water, making it double, and finally the glassy water and the sheen in one spot on the white lily pads.

Some willows for relief in the distance on the right.

It was Ossianic.

I noticed this afternoon that bubbles would not readily form on the water, and soon burst, probably on account of the late rains, which have changed its quality.

There is probably less stagnation and scum. It is less adhesive.

A fine transparent mist.

Lily Bay seemed as wide as a lake.

You referred the shore back to the Clamshell Hills. The mere edge which a flat shore presents makes no distinct impression on the eye and, if seen at all, appears as the base of the distant hills.

Commonly a slight mist yet more conceals it.

The dim low shore, but a few rods distant, is seen as the base of the distant hills whose distance you know. The low shore, if not entirely concealed by the low mist, is seen against the distant hills and passes for their immediate base. For the same reason hills near the water appear much more steep than they are.

We hear a faint metallic chip from a sparrow on the button-bushes or willows now and then.

Rowse was struck by the simplicity of nature now, — the sky the greater part, then a little dab of earth, and after some water near you.

Looking up the reach beyond Clamshell, the moon on our east quarter, its sheen was reflected for half a mile from the pads and the rippled water next them on that side, while the willows lined the shore in indistinct black masses like trees made with India ink (without distinct branches), and it looked like a sort of Broadway with the sun reflected from its pavements.

Such willows might be made with soot or smoke merely, lumpish with fine edges.

Meanwhile Fair Haven Hill, seen blue through the transparent mist, was as large and imposing as Wachusett, and we seemed to be approaching the Highlands of the river, a mountain pass, where the river had burst through mountains. A high mountain would be no more imposing.

Now I began to hear owls, screech (?) owls, at a distance up-stream; but we hardly got nearer to them, as if they retreated before us. At length, when off Wheeler's grape and cranberry meadow, we heard one near at hand.

The rhythm of it was pe-pe-ou; this once or twice repeated, but more of a squeal and somewhat human. Or do not all strange sounds thrill us as human, till we have learned to refer them to their proper source? 

They appeared to answer one another half a mile apart; could be heard from far woods a mile off.

The wind has risen and the echo is poor; it does not reverberate up and down the river.

No sound of a bullfrog, but steadily the cricket-like Rana palustris alongshore.

Rowse heard a whip-poor-will at Sleepy Hollow to night.

No scent of muskrats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 4, 1854

 

Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. See July 30, 1853 (“It suggests that Nature is a kind of gall, that the Creator stung her and man is the grub she is destined to house and feed.”). See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature is genial to man (the anthropic principle)

The gall was anticipated when the oak was made.  See January 3, 1852 ("Oak-apples are a winter fruit . . . Do they not suggest that all vegetable fruit is but the albumen about young animal life?") 

The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea. See Walden ("There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection."); Walden ("To effect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts"); December 11, 1855 ("The winter . . .is as it was designed and made to be, for the artist has had leisure to add beauty.") 

The artist cannot 

be hurried – time stands still while 

art is created

 September 24, 1859

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

As God stung Nature

and planted the seed of man

the artist changes

the direction of Nature –

Art itself a gall.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The artist changes the direction of Nature

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-540904

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

The second still, misty, mizzling and rainy day. On Lake Champlain, the pilots of steam boats could hardly see their course.

September 2.

The second still, misty, mizzling and rainy day. We all lie abed late.

September 2, 2014

P. M. — By boat to Purple Utricularia Shore. Still and cloudy, all shut in, but no rain. 

The flags are turned yellow along the river, quite an autumnal scene, with commonly a strip of green left in their centres.  The button-bushes are generally yellowing, i. e., are of an autumnal yellowish green. The black willows are decidedly crisped and yellowish. The interrupted fern begins to yellow. The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore.

Bathe at Hubbard’s. The water is surprisingly cold on account of the cool weather and rain, but especially since the rain of yesterday morning. It is a very important and remarkable autumnal change. It will not be warm again probably.

The moderate mizzling rain of yesterday and to-day is the first since that moderate one of August 4th. Yet this brings down leaves, cools the rivers and ponds, and brings back ducks and other migratory birds.

The fires in woods and meadows have been remarkably numerous and extensive all over the country, the earth and vegetation have been so dry, especially along railroads and on mountains and pine plains. Some meadows are said to have been burned three feet deep! On some mountains it burns all the soil down to the rock. In all villages they smell smoke, especially at night. On Lake Champlain, the pilots of steam boats could hardly see their course, and many complained that the smoke made their eyes smart and affected their throats. Bears, it is said, have in some instances been compelled to migrate.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 2, 1854


The second still, misty, mizzling and rainy day. See September 10, 1854 ("The still, cloudy, mizzling days, September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought."). See also 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 interrupted fern begins to yellow. See September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever.")

The autumnal dandelion is conspicuous on the shore. See September 1, 1859 ("The autumnal dandelion is a prevailing flower now, but since it shuts up in the afternoon it might not be known as common unless you were out in the morning or in a dark afternoon"); September 21, 1854 ("With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony and the heads of the dilapidated goldenrods")

The fires in woods and meadows have been remarkably numerous . . .  See  August  26, 1854 (“I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also.”); September 25, 1854 (“I see several smokes in the distance, of burning brush. . . . I now smell strongly the smoke of this burning half a mile off, though it is scarcely perceptible in the air.”)

September 2.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 2.

Smoke. On Lake Champlain 

the pilots of steam boats can 

hardly see their course. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The second still, misty, mizzling 

and rainy day. 

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-540902

Misty, mizzling, dewy rain begins the fall. Do not the sparrows now begin to feed on seeds of weeds in gardens?

September 1.

A misty morning followed by a still, cloudy, misty day, through which has fallen a very little rain this forenoon already. 

Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden. Are they the Savannah sparrows? They show no white in tail. Yet I see no yellow on brows. Small feathers on back, centred with black and edged with pale brown (?); inner vanes of wing -quills bay; crown without chestnut; brown dash from angle of mouth backward. Do not the sparrows now commonly begin to feed on seeds of weeds in gardens? 

P. M. — Along river to E. Hosmer’s. A very little mizzling. 

The Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks. 

I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain. It wets my feet much. 

The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. They are so abundant as to be a great ornament to our causeways and riverside. The white berried, too, is now in prime. The Viburnum dentatum berries are smaller and duller. The Viburnum Lentago are just fairly begun to have purple cheeks. 

Even this rain or mizzling brings down many leaves of elms and willows, etc.,—the first, to notice, since the fall of the birches which began so long ago.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 1, 1854

A misty morning followed by a still, cloudy, misty day. See September 2, 1854 ("The second still, misty, mizzling and rainy day . . . The moderate mizzling rain of yesterday and to-day is the first since that moderate one of August 4th. Yet this brings down leaves, cools the rivers and ponds, and brings back ducks and other migratory birds."); September 10, 1854 ("The still, cloudy, mizzling days, September 1st and 2d, the thunder-shower of evening of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought.")

Now I notice a few faint-chipping sparrows, busily picking the seeds of weeds in the garden. See See August 25, 1859 ("Quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden"); September 16, 1854 (“I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.”); September 17, 1858 (“Methinks, too, that there are more sparrows in flocks now about in garden”);   September 27, 1858 ("What are those little birds in flocks in the garden and on the peach trees these mornings, about size of chip-birds, without distinct chestnut crowns?”); October 5, 1858 (" I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard; without very distinct chestnut crowns."); October 7, 1860 (“Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow

Aster Tradescanti is perhaps beginning to whiten the shores on moist banks. See  September 1, 1853 ("That small aster which I call A. Tradescanti, with crowded racemes, somewhat rolled or cylindrical to appearance, of small white flowers a third of an inch in diameter, with yellow disks turning reddish or purplish, is very pretty by the low roadsides, resounding with the hum of honey-bees; which is commonly despised for its smallness and commonness, — with crowded systems of little suns."); September 1, 1856 ("A. Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime.") See also September 7, 1858 ("And now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescantia"); September 10, 1853 ("The Aster Tradescanti, now in its prime, sugars the banks all along the riverside with a profusion of small white blossoms resounding with the hum of bees."): September 13, 1856 ("The Aster Tradescanti now sugars the banks densely, since I left, a week ago. Nature improves this her last opportunity to empty her lap of flowers."); September 14, 1854 ("The banks have now begun fairly to be sugared with the Aster Tradescanti."); September 14, 1856 ("Now for the Aster Tradescanti along low roads, like the Turnpike, swarming with butterflies and bees. Some of them are pink.")

I see a fine (reddish) topped grass in low lands, whitened like a thin veil with what it has caught of this dewy rain.. See September 10, 1860 (" Leaving Lowell at 7 A. M. in the cars, I observed and admired the dew on a fine grass in the meadows, which was almost as white and silvery as frost when the rays of the newly risen sun fell on it . . .Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day, and sooner or later becomes the characteristic feature of some part of the landscape or other.")

The Cornus sericea berries are now in prime, of different shades of blue, lighter or darker, and bluish white. See August 31, 1856 ("The Cornus sericea, with its berries just turning, is generally a dull purple now . ."); August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river, . . .."). See also 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.")

The fall of the birches... (due to drought).  See August 19, 1854 ("Many white birches long since lost the greater part of their leaves, which cover the ground, sere and brown as in autumn.")

September 1. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 1

Do not the sparrows 

now begin to feed on seeds

 of weeds in gardens? 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Misty, mizzling rain begins 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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540901