13 September 1852 – 19 September 1852

Yesterday it rained all day, with consider- able wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls. More leaves also have fallen. Rain has as much to do with it as wind. Rode round through Lincoln and a part of Weston and Wayland.

Ithink it must be the Cornus sericea which I have called the stolonijera. Vide that red stem on the Bear Hill road. The poor student begins now to seek the sun. In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round. It is agreeable to stand in a new relation to the sun. They begin to have a fire occasionally below-stairs. 3.30 p. M. — A-barberrying to Flint’s Pond. The goldenrods have generally lost their brightness. Methinks the asters were in their prime four or five days ago. Came upon a nighthawk on the ground in Thrush Alley. There are many large toadstools, pecked apparently by birds. I find the Castile soap gall still under the oaks. The robins of late fly in flocks, and I hear them oftener. The partridges, grown up, oftener burst away. Pennyroyal still in bloom. The crows congregate and pursue me through the half-covered woodland path, cawing loud and angrily above me, and when they cease, I hear the winnowing sound of their wings. What ragged ones! Water lobelia still in blos- som. Gratiola, horned utricularia, and the white globose flower by Flint’s still. Is that the Cirszxwm muticum, four feet high, in the blue-stemmed goldenrod path, with a glutinous involucre, but I should say spinous? The prinos berries now quite red. How densely they cover the bushes! Very handsome, contrasting with the leaves. The barberries are not wholly reddened yet. How much handsomer in fruit for being bent down in wreaths by the weight! The increasing weight of the fruits adds gracefulness to the form of the bush. I get my hands full of thorns, but my basket full of berries. How productive a barberry bush! On each the berries seem more abundant and plumper than on the last. They stand amid the cedars. Coming home by the pond road, I see and smell the grapes on trees, under the dense bowers made by their leaves in trees, three feet above the water or the road. The purple clusters hang at that height and scent the air. They impart a sense of tropical richness to our zone. I hear little warbling sparrows in the garden, which apparently have come from the north. Now-a-nights -there are fogs pretty extensive in the evening. Sophia has come from Bangor and brought the Dal- barda repens, white dalibarda, a little crenate-rounded- heart-shaped-leafed flower of damp woods; the small- leaved Geranium Carolinianum ; ete.

P. M.— To Great Meadows. The red capsules of the sarothra. Many large crickets about on the sand. Observe the effects of frost in par- ticular places. Some blackberry vines are very red. I see the oxalis and the tree primrose and the Norway cinquefoil and the prenanthes and the Epilobwum colo- ratum and the cardinal-flower and the small hypericum and yarrow, and I think it is the Ranunculus repens, between Ripley Hill and river, with spotted leaves lin- gering still. ‘The soapwort gentian cheers and surprises, —solid bulbs of blue from the shade, the stale grown purplish. It abounds along the river, after so much has been mown. The polygala and the purple gerardia are still common and attract by their high color. The small-flowering Bidens cernua (?) and the fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound. The V2ola lanceo- lata has blossomed again, and the lambkill. What pretty six-fingered leaves the three oxalis leafets make! I see the effects of frost on the Salix Purshiana, imbrowning their masses; and in the distance is a maple or two by the water, beginning to blush. That small, slender-leaved, rose-tinted (white petals, red calyx) polygonum by the river is perhaps in its prime now; slender spikes and slender lanceolate sessile leaves, with rent hairy and ciliate sheaths, eight sta- mens, and three styles united in middle. Not biting. I cannot find it described. And what is that white flower which I should call Cicuta maculata, except that the veins do not terminate in the sinuses ?