A Fall Walk around the Cotton Field

I got my flu shot yesterday and my arm hurt this morning, so I skipped my morning swim in the pool.  Instead, this afternoon, I walked around the cotton field.  It's about a mile and a half, but takes some detours and dodging to make it all the way around.  

The cotton is ready for harvest, with the bolls splitting open to reveal the soft cotton inside.  Although machinery goes all around the field, weeds had grown pretty high in some places.  Cutting through the field isn't an option - cotton has thorns!

So I detoured through the volunteer corn field, where new corn plants have come up in the residue of the corn harvest.

Both corn and cotton harvests leave so much waste that it's hard to imagine how they harvest anything at all.

The path between the goldenrod weeds and the cotton field is quite overgrown with weeds, so I kept a careful eye out for snakes (hoping to see one in the distance) but I never saw any sign of a snake.

Some of the weeds look like little Sputniks with little balls with spikes that jump off the bush onto your clothes if you get too close.

Some have pods that look like Japanese beans - when dry, they pop open and spread seeds far and wide.

Some are just covered with seeds waiting to hitch a ride on anything that passes by.

Along one side of the cotton field, wild pig tracks riddled the area.

Lots of hoof tracks - deer?  pigs?

Second half of the walk is along the road, where all the pretty domestic flowers are so pretty.

Confederate Rose

Canna Lilies

Roses

Lantana

Snapdragons

and many more.  Lovely day for a walk - breezy and warm, with lots of sun, but not too hot.

Georgia in November

Sunset over Lake Eufaula - Low water level leaves many stumps exposed.

Mom's Confederate Rose was in full bloom - no frost yet!

Cotton looks ready for harvest.

Bradford Pear are in their full glorious fall colors.

The farmer is getting ready for cotton harvest.

A lot of cotton is already baled.

And we have a different sunset every night.

Back in Georgia

The lake is really low.  It is about 6' below where it was on the dock before we left in April.

Does this look like a flower bed to you?  It looks like a ton of work to me!

We take the good with the bad - the Satsuma tree is loaded with fruit this year, so it must thrive on neglect and stingy water.

Mom's "dry creek bed" is more of a Sumac forest.  It will be beautiful when the leaves turn red if we don't get to it with the chainsaw before then. 

The house in the background is ours.  The cotton fields are in bloom, cotton bolls just beginning to form.  It will look like snow in a few weeks.

Southern Agriculture - Fall 2010

It still feels like summer, but the fall harvest is well underway.  

You can see the tractor in the background turning the peanut plants.  This is the field across from our house where they are just getting started.

The peanuts are uprooted, turned with the green side down and peanuts up to dry in the sun.

This machine sucks the vines in and separates the peanuts from the vines.  The peanuts are shot into the trailer and the vines are cornrowed so they can be baled on the next pass.

Peanut Hay

Some cotton is just starting to form bolls.

Some is fully formed and ready for harvest.

Some is already baled.  While most bales are still big square blocks, we are seeing the smaller round bales this year.

And all the roads are full of machinery!