“Reflections on life in the Mississippi Delta countryside” series. The Delta is a hauntingly, beautiful, and sometimes difficult place to live. I wanted to capture that beauty and life with samplings of simple events and scenes, past and present, that comprise the complex agricultural landscape called “The Delta.”

At times, while peering across the flat, Delta horizon, one can see crop dusters, agriculture’s aerial acrobats, veering and dipping down, then rising again to make another pass. 

Harvest time brings laborers to pick sweet potatoes; some things are still best done by hand, even in this modern age. 

The beauty of the sunrise over a cypress swamp; contrasted by a rusting Chevy pickup truck, abandoned, no longer needed or wanted, slowly encircled with vines. 

Dotted across the countryside are old church buildings, monuments to our heritage of faith, some still central to spiritual, political, and community life. 

The beauty of the sun setting over a bountiful cotton crop, ripe for harvest, an investment come to life even as the cotton plant dies.