Where are we now?

People are harvesting. Big brown piles of peanut plants all over the fields--the discarded peanut plants whose peanuts have already been taken.
The millet has become a work of art...before all green with a bit of white. Now, ripening, a mix of striking colors...green stalks, some of which are turning yellow. White unripe heads contrasted against the ripened ones which are now a range of bright red to maroon. All those colors together in one little swath of space. And being harvested as well.
Corn stakls are drying up. Butaali yori. I used to think plants, crops dried up and gave their harvest when there was no more water (here) or the weather got too cold (home). But as it goes the crops have a natureal lifespan of a certain amount of days and are dying now as that time is up. I guess I didn't think about it but imagined that as long as there were suitable temperatures nad enough rain they would go on growing and producing, like trees. I guess that's a funy though. But it is strange having lots of rain lately, falling all around, and instead of things popping up growing green, the corn is drying up before our eyes, turning yellow. "No, no! Wait!" I find myself shouting internally, remembering the red, white, orange landscape without a trace of real green through the dry season, and not feeling ready for that.
Villagers are hanging bunches of corn from branches, from porches, from roofs as we do for Thanksgiving decorations, for them, drying it in the sun. And some of it is a bright yellow variety that also, drying in clusters hanging around is striking and beautiful--bright gold clusters of color. The peanuts and other greens--okra, follere, squash leaves-- are strewn on the ground to dry in the sun after harvest. Peanuts on the ground and greens on plastic sacks/tarp.
Squash is growing everywhere, the vines tendrilling up on thatch roofs, giving a whimsical fairyland appearance to most family compounds. And cooking squash leave sauce is one of my favorite things, meals here! Delicious. That added to the happy pink and white flowers that line every little path in village during rainy season do make it seem like a fairytale village.
These days as the sun sets it does marvelous things. I'm sure it does marvelous things all times of year as it sets. I know that for a fact. But lately it takes my breath away and makes me think "Wow, its amazing I'm here--I wish everyone at home could see this." The grass has grown tall and much if it has gone to seed so that the tops are wisps of red or purple or white. Looking into the sun as it sets, it lights on the grasses and turns everything golden, alive and bright and soft. Looking away from the sun, as its setting and just after, the whole world has a purple tint. The red mud of the houses, the grey is straw thatch roofs, the orange and blond paths, the red tipped grasses, as the sun sets all acquire a velvety purple, maroon hue, that melds so well together it becomes a monochromatic world, as if the air itself is purple and gives the tint to everything. It is beautiful.
School more or less has started up for children, though they tend to wander back to classes when their family is ready, either done with them in the fields or finding money for school fields, or remembering a little after the fact! Still, adults are in full fieldwork with the harvest. When does it shift from planting season to weeding season to harvesting season? It is one smooth cycle, through all the summer months. But now officially we are all in the harvesting season I believe...But wait...the rest of the dry season will soon come, and I'm sure people, their bodies especially, are looking forward to that rest, the lack of labor, the sitting around and shelling peanuts in the company of friends.