 Sunny and cool here today. This week is feeling more like late September than August. I identified Northern Corn Leaf Blight in fields about a month ago. On this morning's drive to pick up parts, I could see a lot of the fields showing signs of leaf disease.
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 The corn is now approaching 7 feet tall. We are probably a week away from tasseling. The cool weather we've been having is slowing all the crop down around here. We are almost 1 week behind on heat units now. This field still looks pretty good, but when I drive around the countryside, a lot of fields are showing signs of going backwards due to too much rain.
 The corn is now approaching 5 feet. It has grown almost 2 feet in the last 6 days. We've had over an inch of rain in the last week. They are forecasting more for tonight. We really could use more sunshine as we are now 5 days behind on growing degree units.
 Bright & Sunny this morning. I see the #3 is now covered up on the measuring stick, so the corn is 3+ feet tall. It was right at 2 feet tall a week ago. Everything is pretty wet around here. We've now had over 6" for the month of June.
 Torrential rains this morning. It was fun to be able to watch the corn blow and the water run between the rows. We ended up with 1.38" of rain and it all came in about 30 minutes. The high wind speed was about 40 mph, so we didn't have any wind damage.
 Yesterday the weather was beautiful. Corn is really starting to take off. Rain is on its way today. It is thundering in the distance as I write this. June is still on the cool side. We are 64 GDUs (Growing Degree Units) behind normal for the month. A GDU is a measurement of heat units for corn. We should average about 20 GDUs each day. This puts us about 3 days behind average. I can believe it - our air conditioner has hardly been on this month. Tomorrow is the first day of Summer!
 Sunny & nice today. We put up the measuring stick yesterday, so now you should be able to watch the corn's progress. Right now it is about 2 feet tall.
The ground dried out enough from all the rains that we were able to sidedress Nitrogen on some of our other fields this afternoon. Corn in this area looks really good, but I talked to a friend in Missouri today & they still can't get any soybeans planted and their corn is underwater due to all the rain they've been getting. I hear that much of the South is extremely wet. I hope they get a drier weather pattern soon. We had another 1.1" of rain this morning, bringing the total rainfall for the last 4 days to 4". Most of the fields right around here handled it pretty well, but I hear that there is water standing in fields west of here.
I'm working on painting a measuring stick so there will be better visual comparison in the field. Maybe I'll get it up tomorrow. Jim made it to Japan, but his luggage didn't. He tells me he went shopping on the equivalent of New York's "5th Ave" in Toyko for some new shirts and pants. That would be a "first" for this Iowa farmer! His luggage may never catch up to him. He met with leaders of one of Japan's largest Ag cooperatives this morning & this afternoon he was meeting with a commercial feed millers group. It is still raining & drizzling this morning. Jim is on his way to Japan on a US Grain's Council mission to represent Iowa farmers. He was supposed to be there by now, but yesterday's storms in Chicago messed up his flights. After spending 8 hours in the Cedar Rapids airport, he finally made it to Chicago, where he got to spend the night. He is now on his way to Japan. He's actually feeling a bit glad the forecast is for a lot of wet weather, so he doesn't have to feel guilty about missing out on good days suitable for fieldwork.  Today's picture at noon.
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