I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. We sure did and I want to thank you all for your merry comments. It sure put a smile on my face. Moving on….figuratively and literally….yep, we hit the road yesterday, but before I start sharing our journey I have a couple of loose ends to wrap up about our time in the Phoenix area…….
I never thought my post on Cotton would attract very much attention. Boy, was I wrong. I guess I’m not the only one fascinated by this plant, fiber, textile. Thanks everyone for the awesome and enlightening comments on that post. Some of your comments piqued my interest even further regarding this intriguing plant.
Each time I drove by the cotton fields, I would take in the transformation of the plant. As several of you mentioned, the fields would eventually turn a sea of white, and indeed they did. I then new harvest time was near.
Since it was the holiday season (this harvesting took place mid December) that meant baking and when one lives in a RV it is not unusual to run out of ingredients quickly. Come on, it’s not as if I have a walk-in pantry complete with back-up supplies of flour and sugar and I won’t even begin to talk about the small RV refrigerator…..sigh. Fortunately, I had a super Wal-mart, Safeway, and Fry’s less than fifteen minutes away.
Running out of supplies had me driving off to the store regularly and that meant driving by the cotton and rose fields repeatedly. Oh, darn! Can you tell how inconvenienced I was 😉 wink, wink!
Talk about timing….on one of my returns from a last-minute grocery run….I glanced toward a field and there he was. Oh my gosh!!! I quickly pulled over with little care of any cars behind me, jumped out of my truck, pulled out the camera, and started snapping away. There was even an exchange of waves and perhaps an intended pose.
Two dozen photos later Mr. Harvester is now at the other end of the field. What’s that I see? More equipment in the distance? I had to check it out.
I watched as the tractor unloaded the freshly picked cotton dumping it into another container. It appears this process will then compact the cotton into large dense squares that are numbered and made ready for transport.
I’m not sure how many times the cotton picker goes through a field but it seems to be more than once. The harvesting continued well beyond dark with the aid of lights. This particular field was a buzz with activity for about five days before all the equipment was moved down the road to another field.
With the cotton picking over, it’s time to check on the roses……
Photos of me were taken by fellow blogger Jerry. A big thank you to Jerry for a fun day of running around Phoenix with our cameras. Your photographic talents and vision are inspiring!
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