in Thoreau’s Journal:

Crossing Fair Haven the reflections were very fine—not quite distinct, but prolonged by the fine ripples made by an east wind just risen— At a distance, entering the pond, we mistook some fine sparkles, probably of insects—for ducks in the water—they were so large, which when we were nearer, looking down at a greater angle with the surface—wholly disappeared. Some large-leaved willow bushes in the meadow southeast of Lee’s reflected the light from the under sides of a part of their leaves—as if frost-covered, or as if white asters were mingled with them. We saw but two white lilies on this voyage—they are now done. About a dozen pontederia spikes—no Mikania (that is now white or grey) four or five large yellow lilies, and two or three small yellow lilies. The Bidens Bechii is drowned or dried up—& has given place to the Great Bidens, the flower & ornament of the river sides at present—& now in its glory, especially at I.  Rice’s shore—where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow Channing says a lemon yellow—& looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). Full of the sun. It needs a name. I see tufts of ferns on the edge of the meadows at a little distance—handsomely tipped on edge with cinnamon brown—like so many brown fires—they light up the meadows— The button-bush every where yellowing.

Photo: September 14, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Asters various shades of blue and especially the smaller kinds of dense flowering white ones are more than ever—by the roadsides….The golden glow of autumn concentrated—more golden than the sun….The earth wears different colors or liveries at different seasons.  If I come by at this season a golden blaze will salute me here from a thousand suns.  How earnestly & rapidly each creature—each flower is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!  Nature never lost a day—nor a moment — As the planet in its orbit & around its axis—so do the seasons— —so does time revolve with a rapidity inconceivable.  

Photo: September 13, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

This is the season of fogs.

Photo: September 12, 2016 at Dinsmore Pond, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The conspicuous & handsome bluish masses of A puniceus erect or fallen stretch in endless rows along the brook — often as high as your head— Sometimes make islands in the meadows.

September 11, 2019 along Millbridge Road, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Cardinal-flower nearly done.

Photo: September 10, 2004 at Intervale Pond, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

2 A. M. – The moon not quite full. To Conantum via road. There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the depot, dense and white, though scarcely higher than a man’s head, concealing the stems of the trees. I see that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly outlined, are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This as I go up the back road. A few thin, ineffectual clouds in the sky. I come out thus into the moonlit night, where men are not, as if into a scenery anciently deserted by men. The life of men is like a dream. It is three thousand years since night has had possession. Go forth and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear if their dynasty is not an ancient one and well founded. I feel the antiquity of the night. She surely repossesses herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were uninterrupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but the steady creaking of crickets and the occasional crowing of cocks. I go by the farmer’s houses and barns, standing there in the dim light under the trees, as if they lay at an immense distance or under a veil. The farmer and his oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake. The human slumbers. There is less of man in the world. The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never still. It now advances and envelops me as I stand to write these words, then clears away, with ever noiseless step. It covers the meadows like a web. I hear the clock strike three.

Photo: September 9, 2018 along Great Rock Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

While the grass is fresh the earth is in its vigor. The greenness of the grass is the best symptom or evidence of the earth’s youth or health. Perhaps it will be found that when the grass ceases to be fresh & green or after June—the birds have ceased to sing—& the fireflies too no longer in myriads sparkle in the meadows—

Perhaps a history of the year would be a history of the grass, or of a leaf, regarding the grass-blades as leaves, for it is equally true that the leaves soon lose their freshness and soundness, and become the prey of insects and of drought… The period of youth is past. The year may be in its summer, in its manhood, but it is no longer in the flower of its age. It is a season of withering, of dust and heat, a season of small fruits and trivial experiences.  Summer thus answers to manhood. But there is an aftermath in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom again, followed by an Indian summer of finer atmosphere and of a pensive beauty. May my life be not destitute of its Indian summer, a season of fine and clear, mild weather…

Photo: September 8, 2009 on Doublehead Mt., Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis  between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellow flowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescanti.

Photo: September 7, 2017 along Millbridge Rd, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Staghorn sumach berries probably some time, but ours are injured by worms.

Photo: September 6, 2023 on the Algonquin Rd, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

China-like berries of cornel along the river now abundant, some cymes wholly white; also the panicled there and in swamps, though its little red (?) fingers stems are oftenest bare, but are pretty enough, perhaps, to take the place of the berries. The black choke-berries, as also choke-cherries, are stale. The two-leaved Solomon’s-seal has just begun to redden; so the largest one. The creeping juniper berries are now a hoary green but full-grown. The scarlet thorn is in many places quite edible and now a deep scarlet. Polygonum and medulla now. Green-briar only begins to turn. Viburnum nudum rather stale. Clintonia probably about gone. Carrion-flower in prime. Maple viburnum fully ripe, like the dentatum. Aralia hispida getting old. Feverwort now. Rose hips generally beginning; and two primroses beginning. Elder in prime and cranberry. Smooth sumach stale.

Photo: September 5, 2016 on an unnamed trail off Range Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts, — something for conversation in winter evenings. I love to think then of the more distant walks I took in summer.

Photo: September 4, 2023 at the Moses Hall House on the Sandwich Notch Road, Sandwich, New Hampshire

in Thoreau’s Journal:

The Soapwort gentian out abundantly in Flints-Bridge Lane—ap. for a week—a surprisingly deep faintly purplish blue….it has the flowering of the sky. The sky has descended & kissed the earth….Why come these blue flowers thus late in the year.

September 3, 2016 on an unnamed trail off Range Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart. The maturity of the mind, however, may perchance consist with a certain dryness.

Photo: September 2, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Cohosh 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. The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting; also the smaller and similar clusters of the two-leaved convallaria. Many of the last and a few of the first are already turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a pleasant sweetish taste.

Photo: September 1, 2023 at Kiah Pond, Sandwich, New Hampshire

August 31, 1850 in Thoreau’s Journal:

We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall.

Photo: August 31, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

August 31, 1850 in Thoreau’s Journal:

We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall.

Photo: August 31, 2023 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberatively and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man’s genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be without an object, thought it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not only be the flavor of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy.

Photo: August 30, 2017 at Chicks Corner, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened, and the rain loosened? Are there no purple reflections from the culms of thought in my mind?

culm | kəlm |noun

the hollow stem of a grass or cereal plant, especially that bearing the flower.

Photo: August 29, 2018 on Diamond Ledge Road, Sandwich, NH

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.

Photo: August 28, 2013 along Dinsmore Pond Road, Sandwich, NH

in Thoreau’s Journal:

Would it not be well to describe some of those rough—all day walks across lots….

—-Picking our way over quaking meadows & swamps —& occasionally slipping into the muddy batter mid-leg deep—-jumping or fording ditches & brooks—forcing our way through dense blueberry swamps—-where there is water beneath & bushes above—then brushing through extensive birch forests all covered with green lice—which cover our clothes & face—then under larger wood relieved, more open beneath—-steering for some more conspicuous trunk Now along a rocky hill side where the sweet fern grows for a mile—then over a recent cutting—finding our uncertain footing on the cracking tops & trimmings of trees left by the choppers— Now taking a step or 2 of smooth walking across a high way— Now through a dense pine wood descending—into a rank dry swamp where the cinnamon fern rises above your head—with isles of poison dog wood— Now up a scraggy hill—covered with shrub oak—stooping & winding ones way—for half a mile—tearing ones clothes in many places & putting out ones eyes—& find at last that it has no bare brow but another slope of the same character— Now through a corn field diagonally with the rows—now coming upon the hidden melon patch seeing the back-side of familiar hills & not knowing them. The nearest house to home which you do not know—seeming further off—than the farthest which you do know— In the spring defiled with the froth on various bushes, &c &c &c— Now reaching on higher land some open—pigeon place—a breathing place for us.

Photo: August 27, 2010 at Whiteface Intervale, Sandwich, New Hampshire