5 September 1853 – 11 September 1853

To Framingham. Saw, in a meadow in Wayland, at a little distance, what I have no doubt was an island of Aster puniceus, one rod in diameter, — one mass of flowers five feet high.

R. W. E. brought from Yarmouth this week Chrysopsis falcata in bloom and Vaccinium stamineum, deerberry, or squaw huckleberry, — the last with green berries, some as large as cranberries, globular (not pear-shaped), on slender peduncles, not edible, in low ground. | Yesterday and to-day and day before yesterday, some hours of very warm weather, as oppressive as any in the year, one’s thermometer at 93°.

Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore’s Swamp, with Viola pedata.

Half a bushel of handsome pears on the ground under the wild pear tree on Pedrick’s land; some ripe, many more on tree. J. Wesson, who is helping me survey to-day, says that, when they dug the cellar of Stacy’s shop, he saw where they cut through (with the spade) birches six inches in diameter, on which the Mill-Dam had been built; also that Nathan Hosmer, Sr., since dead, told him that he had cut meadow-grass between the bakehouse and the Middle- sex Hotel. I find myself covered with green and winged lice from the birches.

The pontederia and pads have already their fall look by river. It is not the work of frost. 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. It covered the ground to the depth of two feet over large tracts, looking at a little distance somewhat like a smart hoar frost or sleet or sugaring on the weeds. The banks are sugared with the A. Tradescantt.

Sunday. Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. A great change since the 6th, when the heat was so oppressive. The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again. P. M. — To Dugan’s. I think I can correct somewhat my account of the goldenrods of September 4th, [two] pages back. No. 2 may be S. stricta, after all. (Vide the one at Hosmer’s ditch.) Is not the puberula of September 4th same with No. 2? Is not No. 3 one form of S. altissima ? Doubt if I have seen S. ulmifolia. Is not No. 4 the true S. puberula ? It is the same with that by Marl- borough road, September Ist. The speciosa may not open for a week yet. The present appearance of the solidago in Hosmer’s ditch which may be S. stricta’ is a stout erect red stem with entire, lanceolate, thick, fleshy, smooth sessile leaves above, gradually increasing in length downward till ten inches long and becoming toothed.” All parts very smooth. Not yet out. This apparently same with No. 2. The S. nemoralis is not as fresh as a week ago. Per- haps that was the date for the goldenrods generally. Perhaps this is the time for asters. The conspicuous and 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 meadow. Polygonum articulatum out, many of them, at the Desert. None out September Ist. Say, then, September 5th. A. undulatus is now in prime, very abundant along path-sides. The branches of its panicle are commonly of about equal length on different sides the stem, and as the flowers are crowded and stand vertically on the sides as well as horizontally above, they form one (or sometimes more) conical or pyramidal or cylindrical hollow panicles of middle-sized purplish flowers, roundly bunched. Signs of frost last night in M. Miles’s cleared swamp. Potato vines black. How much farther it is back to frost from the greatest heat of summer, 2. e. from the 6th [of this month] back to the Ist of June, three months, than forward to it, four days! Checkerberries are full-grown, but green. They must have been new mitchella berries, then, that I saw some time ago. River cornel berries have begun to disappear. In a stubble-field, I go through a very fine, diffusely branching grass now going to seed, which is like a reddish mist to my eyes, two feet deep, and trembling around me. There is an aster in Hosmer’s ditch, like longifolius, with linear leaves remotely toothed, red stem, smooth, three or four feet high, but scales not recurved and flowers much smaller, with many purplish disks.