in Thoreau’s Journal:

First frost in our garden. Passed in boat within fifteen feet of a great bittern, standing perfectly still in the water by the riverside, with the point of its bill directly up, as if it knew that from the color of its throat, etc., it was much less likely to be detected in that position, near weeds.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The purple balls of the carrion-flower, now open a little beneath, standing out on all sides six or eight inches from the twining stem, are very handsome.

They are covered with a blue bloom, and when this is rubbed off by leaves, are a shining blackish.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them. So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now the red osier berries are very handsome along the river, overhanging the water, for the most part pale blue mixed with whitish, —part of the pendant jewelry of the season. The berries of the alternate-leaved cornel have dropped off mostly. The white-berried and red osier are in their prime. The other three kinds I have not seen. The viburnums, dentatum and nudum, are in their prime. The sweet viburnum not yet purple, and the maple-leaved still yellowish. Hemp still in blossom.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The Medeola Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is now in green fruit.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

June. July. August. The tortoise eggs are hatching beneath the surface in the sandy fields. You tell of active labors, of works of art and wars this past summer; meanwhile tortoise eggs underlie this turmoil. What events have transpired on the lit and airy surface three inches above them! …. Think what a summer to them! How many worthy men have died and had their funeral services preached since I saw the mother turtle bury her eggs here. They contained an undeveloped liquid then, they are now turtles. June, July, August the livelong summer what are they with their heats and fevers but sufficient to hatch a turtle in. Be not in haste; mind your private affairs.

Consider the turtle. A whole summer June, July, August is not too good nor too much to hatch a turtle in. Perhaps you have worried yourself, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life and all things seem rushing to destruction, but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with a turtle’s pace…French empires rise or fall but the turtle is only developed so fast… So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleans. They have seen no berries, had no cares, yet the great world existed for them, as much for you.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Methinks the truly weather-wise will know themselves––& find the signs of rain in their own moods––the aspect of their own skies or thoughts & not consult swallows & spiders–– 

I incline always [to] questions about the weather without thinking.  Does a mind in sympathy with nature need a hygrometer?  [Entry for August 26, 1852:  Rain Rain.]

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The weather is warmer again after a week or more of cool days. There is greater average warmth, but not such intolerable heats as in July. The nights especially are more equably warm now, even when the day has been comparatively rather cool.

There are few days now, fewer than in July, when you cannot lie at your length on the grass. You have now forgotten winter and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions. Your life may be out-of-doors now mainly.

August 23, 1851 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Resolve to read no book––to take no walk––to undertake no enterprise but such as you can endure to give an account of to yourself. 

Live thus deliberately for the most part….

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs….Perhaps fruits are colored like the trillium berry & the scarlet thorn to attract birds to them…..The panicled cornel berries now white.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is some advantage, intellectually and spiritually, in taking wide views with the bodily eye and not pursing an occupation which holds the body prone. There is some advantage, perhaps, in attending to the general features of the landscape over studying the particular plants and animals which inhabit it. A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than the naturalist, though they may walk side by side. Granted that you are out-of-doors; but what if the outer door is open, if the inner door is shut!

You must walk perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The neottia, or ladies’-tresses, behind Garfield’s house.

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. The grasshoppers seem no drier than the grass. In Lee’s field are two kinds of plantain. Is the common one found there?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The grass in the high pastures is almost as dry as hay –– The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other.

If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by & you not see it. How much of the year is spring & fall! How little can be called summer!  The grass is no sooner grown than it begins to wither. 

in Thoreau’s Journal:

As I go along the hillsides in sprout-lands, amid the Solidago stricta, looking for the blackberries left after the rain, the sun warm as ever, but the air cool nevertheless, I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail. Such preparation, such an outfit has our life, and so little brought to pass!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of the wind in the woods.

I, whose life was but yesterday so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits, my spirituality, through my hearing. For joy I could embrace the earth…

August 16, 1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:

These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street—but cannot tell where they are—loud is their song—drowning many others—but men appear not to distinguish it—though it pervade their ears as the dust their eyes.

The river was exceedingly fair this afternoon—and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak—the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore…

I must look for the Rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clarks.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Elder berry ripe.  The river was lowest early in July. Some time past I have noticed meadow-grass floating on the river, reminding me that they were getting the hay up the stream. Some naked viburnum berries are quite dark purple amid the red, while other bunches are wholly green yet. The red choke-berry is small and green still. I plainly distinguish it, also, by its woolly under side. In E. Hubbard’s swamp I gather some large and juicy and agreeable rum cherries. The birds make much account of them. They are much finer than the small ones on large trees; quite a good fruit. Some cranberries turned red on one cheek along the edges of the meadows. Now a sudden gust of wind blows from the northwest, cooled by a storm there, blowing the dust from roads far over the fields. The whole air, indeed, is suddenly filled with dust, and the outlines of the clouds are concealed. But it proves only the wind of the fall, which apparently passes north of us. That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season,   —autumnal.  Here is a second crop of clover almost as red as the first. The swamp blackberry begins. Saw a blue heron on the meadow. Aster amplexicaulis of Bigelow, apparently; probably for a day or two. An orchis by the brook under the Cliffs with only three white flowers, only smaller than the fringed white; spurs half an inch long. May it be another species?

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I perceive the scent of the earliest ripe apples in my walk. How it surpasses all their flavors!

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I have been in the swamp by Charles Miles’s this afternoon, and found it so bosky and sylvan that Art would never have freedom or courage to imitate it. It can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature….

Surely no stinted hand has been at work here for these centuries to produce these particular tints this summer. The double spruce attracts me here, which I had hardly noticed in the gardens, and now I understand why men try to make them grow about their houses.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

There is an early redness in the east which I was not prepared for, changing to amber or saffron, with clouds beneath in the horizon and also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as if they had not left their perches, so sensible to light to wake so soon, —a faint peeping sound from I know not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake sound, like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the earliest dawn. Nature preserves her innocence like a beautiful child. I hear a wood thrush even now, long before sunrise, as in the heat of the day. And the pewee and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed? I do not hear —or do not mind, perchance—the crickets now.  Now whip-poor-wills commence to sing in earnest, considerably after the wood thrush. The wood thrush, that beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter his pine woods. (So you may hear the wood thrush and whip-poor-will at the same time.) Now go by two whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts from the eye of day. And the bats are flying about on the edge of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in catching insects. The moon appears at length, not yet as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her fate. The early cars sound like a wind in the woods. The chewinks make a business now of waking each other up with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse. The sun would have shown before but for the cloud. Now, on his rising, not the clear sky, but the cheeks of the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red, which, like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then to the white light of day.