"Our great-aunt loved the fields, the hills, cotton plants, the clear star in our evening sky, the bastard saffron blossoms and moon vines, the crimson poke, and the south wind and the fierce Southern sun, shining straight down, a hundred degrees in the shade. She watched the white drift of the plum trees, the dogwood and the yellow jessamine and jewelweeds and the wild Indian turnips. She heard the hidden song of the hermit thrush." — Ben Robertson, Red Hills and Cotton