Cotton and Traffic Jams

If you aren't in our neck of the woods or even in this hemisphere you might not realize that it is Cotton Picking season right now, along with soybeans but they aren't nearly as dear to my heart. I know you may have read or seen movies where they are picking in the summer but trust me cotton is done in the late fall. I'm a fan of Fall, it has all the great tree colors, Pumpkins, my favorite holiday, Halloween and the weather has generally toned down a bit. You get those great cool nights, when you can sit outside with out being eaten alive by bugs or melting from the heat. But Fall really means harvest time around here. The winter crops are planted and the last of the summer crops are coming in. I few weeks ago I was walking around down our road and we have a few fields on either side. The cotton was just about ready so I appropriated a couple of stalks for a fall wreath I was working on. I neglected to get a picture of the wreath but I did get one of the Cotton, Some of the bolls (that's the green thing on the right side) hadn't opened yet so it made a great addition to the wreath, along with a few magnolia leaves. I'll have to make a point to make another for me. I think I still have a branch or two of the cotton left.

As someone who works with fibers, crochet and spinning, I get all worked up when I see how much cotton actually gets left on the ground after the harvest. It will look like it has snowed around here for a couple of weeks until it gets worked back into the ground. I always want to run out and pick up a few bushels for combing but then I think about the thousand of pounds of pesticides they spray it with and it keeps me from snapping it all up. Just barely but that is some pretty nasty stuff. You can see the huge bales on the left, that they compress it into so that it can be transported to the mills. It's hard to tell from here but those are huge piles of cotton.

And I'll sum this all up with the reason I got on the cotton kick for today. I was trapped behind this, on my way out this morning for a good while. These things just crawl along..

We don't have to worry too much about traffic around here but tractors can certainly back everything up for a while. I wouldn't have worried too much but I was on my way to Michael's with a great coupon AND yarn is on sale, so it wasn't very welcome this morning. I did make it to the sale and I'll have some posts soon showing off a few projects I've got planned.

Here's Hoping you'll have a traffic free day also!