The Sunflower

For the past few weeks, I've been driving by a lonely sunflower in the middle of a grass field:

This sentinel flower has been standing at full attention, dutifully facing the sun, every time I drive by in the morning.  Every day, it puts a smile on my face.

Here's the sunflower in full context:

The maples in the background are starting to turn yellow and orange and red, and the ash trees have lost almost all of their leaves.  This coming weekend will probably be the best showing of fall colours, and we've got our fingers crossed that the weather will hold out.  Speaking from experience, we just need one wet and windy day to bring all the leaves down.  That would spell the end of summer 2013, and we don't want that to happen just yet.  It seems like summer just started!  We've got some rain in the forecast this weekend, and then more of what we've been having.  Our current spell of beautiful weather has been the best we've had all year, it seems.  Not a single night of frost, not a single rainy day, just bright sunny days, and cool foggy nights.  Just perfect!

The soy fields in our area were cut in the past week, and the field right across from my favorite sunflower is bare:

You can make out the adjoining field of corn on the left-hand side of the photo.  Corn still has a few weeks to go before harvest.

Our wheat was harvested a few weeks ago, and our fields have already been spread with manure and plowed under, ready for next spring.  Our direct neighbour has spread his field with liquid manure, so maybe a bit of rain to wash the smell into the soil might not be a bad idea.  Right now, it's nausea-inducing.

My favorite sunflower started to hang its head late this week, and today when I drove by, the field had been cut.   Bye-bye sunflower, hope to see you again next year.