The Fields Are White Already to Harvest

Something I've learned--

For a long time I lived with the misconception that not much vegetation grows in the desert--except cacti and Joshua trees. This last year in AZ taught me differently.

Last January while house hunting, we noticed empty fields lined with

enormous white bales--(we're talking the size of school buses.)

When we moved into our house we noticed our neighbor--hood is bordered on the north and south by fields. During the spring we watched the fields go from brown to green. We learned that some were fields of feed corn while others were fields of sorghum (pictured here.)


By August we noticed that the two fields near our house had not only turned a dark green, but they were also now flowering--but what? Any guesses as to what this might be?

While we lived in SC, I got to visit a couple majestic plantations where cotton was grown long ago, and one of them had a small field representative of this crop. The field I saw was post-harvest so when the fields surrounding us here turned green, I did not immediately think-- cotton. Also, having experienced the humidity of the South for a bit, it never occurred to me that cotton could grow in the humid-free climate of AZ. I now know better! In the first few weeks of December we watched from our northern facing window, the harvest process. As you'll see, Lil' J was mesmerized!

Once our neighboring fields of white were being harvested, I knew it wouldn't be long before all the cotton fields in the area would undergo that process as well. So, a few days later I found some unharvested fields and took the following pictures--enjoy!