in Thoreau’s Journal

The leaves of some young maples in the water about the pond are now quite scarlet—running into dark purple red.

[August 25, 1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:  At length, before sundown, it begins to rain. You can hardly say when it began, and now, after dark, the sound of it dripping and pattering without is quite cheering. It is long since I heard it. One of those serious and normal storms, not a shower which you can see through, something regular, a fall (?) rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the  mind, not a transient cloud that drops rain. Methinks the truly weather-wise will know themselves and find the signs of rain in their own moods, the aspect of their own skies or thoughts, and not consult swallows and spiders. I incline always [to] questions about the weather without thinking. Does a mind in sympathy with nature need a hygrometer?] 

August 26, 1852 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Rain Rain.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Yesterday was a hot day—but oh, this dull cloudy breezy thoughtful weather in which the creak of the cricket sounds louder!

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

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.

Everything is done in season, and there is no time to spare.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Now that birds & flowers fall off, fruits take their places and young birds in flocks–  What a list of bright colored—sometimes venomous looking berries spot the swamps & copses amid changing leaves!  For colors they will surpass the flowers methinks—  There is something rare—precious—& gem like about them.

Now is their time & I must attend to them— Some like grapes we gather & eat but the fairest are not edible.

 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.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Fruits now take the place of flowers to some extent.  These brilliant colored fruits flower like….The sound of the crickets gradually prevails more and more, I hear the year falling asleep….The high blackberries by the road side are sweet but covered with dust….The bitter-sweet berries now bright red still handsomer than the flowers. The barberries are turning. 

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

Prinos berries have begun to redden.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The skunk cabbages—& the trilliums both leaves & fruit are many flat prostrate—the former decaying and all looking as if early frosts had prevailed….

The red-stemmed (?) cornel berries…

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Elizabeth Hoar shows me the following plants which she brought from the Wht Mts the 16th ult. Chiogenes hispidula creeping snow-berry also called Gaultheria & also vaccinia hispidula—in fruit.  —  with a partridge berry scent & taste. Taxus Canadensis Ground hemlock with red cup shaped berries very handsome & remarkably like wax or red marble. Planthera orbiculata remarkable for its watery shining leaves fast on the ground while its spike of flowers rises perpendicular—suggesting as she said respose & steadiness amid the prostrate trunks—& you could not avoid seeing it any more than a child in blossom. Oxallis acetosella in blossom. Arenaria Groenlandica also in bloom in tufts like houstonia. Lonicera ciliata probably with a double red fruit.

She also brought Lichens & mosses & convallaria berries which she gathered at the flume in Franconia—the latter red ripe hanging from the axils of the leaves—affected me—reminding me of the progress of autumn in the north—& the other two were a very fit importation still dripping with the moisture the water of the flume. It carries you indeed into the primitive wood. To think how in those wild woods now hang these wild berries in grim solitude as of yore—already scenting their autumn— A thousand years ago this convallaria growing there—its berries turning red as now & leaves acquiring an autumnal tint.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This mornings red, there being a misty cloud there—is equal to an evening red. 

The woods are very still…

The white cornel berries are dropping off before they are fairly white.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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

in Thoreau’s Journal:

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 2nd crop of clover almost as red as the 1st. The swamp blackberry begins. Saw a blue-heron on the meadow—

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Viburnum dentatum berries blue. Saw a rose still— 

There is such a haze that I cannot see the mts

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I hear that the coralhoriza odontorhiza (coral root) is out.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

I think that I begin to see a few more hawks than of late.

 in Thoreau’s Journal:

The mt Ash berries are turning.

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we hear nowadays are of one character and peculiar to the season.