The corn season

I took these pictures as I walked around our community 2 weeks ago. 3 or 4 times per week, I walk with friends from our compound, around Jack and Jed's school and back. It is about 5 miles around. You can see there are still leaves on the trees and the bushes are green.



The corn is out on the roads again. I love this time of year. The weather is usually below 80. We've had some lovely, blue sky days (not today, though), and people are out enjoying the days. As I've posted in years past, this is the time of year, like in many other places around the world, when corn is harvested. Here, however, there is a different practice. They lay the corn cobs out in the road to dry, then they scrape the kernels off the cobs, by hand as you can see here, to dry further. Later, it is collected and the waiguoren (foreigners) debate what we think is later done with the corn. I have a friend who refuses to eat corn here, for fear she'd eat something that has lain on the road for weeks.

My theory is that it is used for flour and animal feed. I think it's probably best not to think too much about it.