Oktibbeha County has a number of African American cemeteries, including the Good Fellows and Boyd cemeteries, which came into being in part because of segregated burial policies. There are also some actual segregated cemeteries around here, with a fence or wall dividing black and white graves, but I haven't seen one of those yet.
The Boyd cemetery is on the side of a road that runs behind our house, on a large, wooded lot that's squished in between a number of new housing subdivisions. There's no sign marking it -- just some old gates that are always open. A number of the them are falling apart, and some were almost entirely covered with long grasses, but there were still lots of plastic flowers and other signs that people were visiting. I saw grave stones dating to the mid-1800s, and there were a few recent burials, too.
The Odd Fellows cemetery is next to a busy road in the
center of town, and is on the national register of historic places. It's
on a big hill overlooking some houses and the playground of an
elementary school, which is kind of nice. The names and dates on a number of the gravestones were hand-carved.
My favorite part of these cemeteries were all of the gravestones with photo engravings, which is something I had never seen before.
The Mississippi State experimental agriculture fields are just across the road from our house. Right now they're filled to the brim with cotton.
Columbus was called Possum Town for a while in the early 1800s, and the name has stuck. Yesterday a friend and I went to the annual Possum Town Yard Sale, whose proceeds go to support the Hitching Lot Farmers' Market. The weather was gorgeous (somewhere in the 60s), and there was a great turn-out.
There were some real gems for sale.
And some of my favorite farmers showed up as well. Aren't those persimmons beautiful?
On Saturday I went to an estate sale at a farm just outside of Louisville (MS). It was at a pretty farmhouse, where there were several falling-apart barns and fields with long grass. There was also lots of cool, old farm equipment for sale, but I couldn't quite justify bringing any of the pieces home with me.
I then went into town, where there happened to be a "Stew Stomp" and sweet tea contest on Main Street.
This guy was getting teased about having his photo taken.
There's a little nature preserve close to Columbus called Plymouth Bluff, named after the tiny town that was originally there.
Here's the small swamp at one end of the preserve. The green stuff on top of the water is called Duckweed, which is the smallest of all flowering plants. They're also sometimes called Water Lentils, which is a really good description of what they look like up close.
One thing we've noticed on the couple of woodsy walks we've taken here is that spiderwebs abound. Especially spiderwebs that go across the trail right about at face height. Here's one of the little offenders (totally harmless, apparently):
Osage orange trees are all over the place...
...as are Old Man trees. (Ent?)
And, finally, someone's home that I came across along the trail. I didn't see anyone inside, but it sure looked nice and cozy in there.
