Summer Sweetness

Certain treats can only be properly enjoyed during the long hot days of summer in the South. Like the crisp crunch of a melon picked straight from a field belonging to the farmer's friend. Slightly cooled where it's hidden beneath the endless greenery of a myriad of vines tumbling over one another. Sliced with a pocket knife and broken open on the dirt with a soft thud. No utensils needed.....only fingers. Oh so sticky and surprisingly satisfying in the heat of the day. Summer sweetness at its finest.

The unforgettable freshness of fruit plucked from the vine by eager young fingers is the just one of the plethora of perfect pleasures found in the country life.

Blooms and Bolls

In the hazy heat of a Southern Summer morning the cotton fields around the farmer's house take on the appearance of a watercolor painting. Endless, perfect landscapes of green stippled with blooms of white and red and every shade of pink between the two. A closer inspection, however, reveals something that, to the farmer, is even more beautiful than the blooms. Hidden among the leaves and stalks, are full and perfect bolls of green stippled with brown. The result of blooms past. The hope of future harvest.

Blooms and bolls appear together for time, but soon the blooms will fade away with the cotton's leaves and the last of summer's heat and the bolls will emerge as the true beauty of the cotton plant for every passing eye to behold....fields white for harvest.

 

Chopping Cotton

The war on weeds continues in the late afternoon hours of a mid-summer day with a ground strike. The present battle is waged with the seemingly lost art of chopping cotton. Healthy green leaves rustle as the farm family moves slowly, steadily, with freshly sharpened hoes in hand, through each and every row, carefully searching for any life stealing life from the precious green bolls that now dot the bottom branches of the cotton. The near silence of hard labor is broken occasionally by the soft thud of metal meeting earth....the faint sound of the farm guillotine chopping off the heads of weeds condemned to death.

The monotony of the task at hand is happily broken at the end of each round with the rewards of an ice-cold drink and a momentary break used by the young country boys to catch critters and by the older folk to share dreams of future plans that don't involve such hard work.