short stories 5

Cotton

before the defoliant

We drove by the desiccated cotton field today and noticed a wide swath had been cut through the length of the field. I've been wondering when he was going to harvest but there was no sign of the harvesters. Made us wonder if this was a test to see what the crop looked like. It looks like the bottom half of his crop is on the ground and the bolls at the top are only half the size of the first ones. There are many that haven't popped yet. The farmer that works these fields planted late this year, at least it seemed so to us. It also seems that he is harvesting late since I have seen cotton fields that have already been cleared.

after the defoliant

Cotton is harvested now by huge house sized machines. They suck it up and then spit it out into a freight sized container and then it is compressed. At one time, of course, cotton was picked by hand. I took my grandkids out to the field year before last, when it was a cotton year. We had been talking about slavery because they had been learning about it at school. It was a hot cloudless day and we stood on the edge of a field that seemed to go forever. I told them that as slaves they would be expected to pick every bit by hand working from sun up to sun down, that they would be hungry and not clothed very well and that if they worked too slow or misbehaved they would be whipped. When we had been talking about it, they could say that slavery was bad, but standing there at the edge of that field, I think they understood it from a totally different perspective.

immature cotton bolls

Surprise!

I was delightedly surprised to see, at the city house, that the surprise lilies were blooming. My friend Phyllis calls them spider lilies but I know spider lilies as something very different.

They are called surprise lilies because they shoot up an 18” or longer bloom stalk in two days with no foliage. Can you imagine, that much growth in two days? One day you see nothing, the next is this beautiful flower hovering above the ground. With no foliage, it's easy to forget where they are planted or even that they are there. They do actually have foliage and it emerges after they bloom but then it also dies down long before they bloom again. 

When we first moved into the city house those many years ago, they were one of the delights that came with the house and they bloomed every year. Eventually though, the bulbs got old and they stopped blooming. About eight years or so ago, I dug a lot of them up, spread them out hoping that it would rejuvenate them a bit and get them blooming again but it didn't work. Once every several years we might get one but this year there are three small clumps. I'm wondering if that very cold weather last winter is responsible.

Strange growth

Last Saturday was finally cool enough for some working in the yard. Late afternoon I worked in an area where I have some things planted, an informal area not yet an actual flower bed, pulling up grass and other things, disturbing the soil. The next day when I went out to water before we left for the city I saw these very weird mushroom type fungi there where I had worked.

They grew up overnight and I don't believe I have ever seen their like before. They were very wet and gooey looking. Strangely exotically beautiful.

Egg shells

I am happy to say that the second time firing the egg shells was a success. We broke them out one at a time and they all cast well. Now I have to use the ring saw and cut the remainder of the glass off and then reshape the end. I'm very pleased that they cast the second time and I do not have to remake the waxes.