Editor’s note: Many of you have enjoyed my Pic of the Day for quite a few years now. I’m starting something new to select certain images and give a little more backstory on why I chose to share it. Let’s see how this goes! I hope you enjoy it…

Day #225/365: The corn crop, leaves curled to conserve moisture versus a sky too stingy with its rain. Both want the thing the other is unwilling to give. This season’s yield may be disappointing.

We were out at the farm, just checking things out last weekend. The bright orange day lilies on the roadside had long since dried up; and all that remained was the lavender of the chicory, dusty thistle and the tired but stubborn green of mid-August.

I’ll be the first to admit that my eye is still quite novice, even after the years I’ve spent watching my neighbors planting and harvesting. But you could see it as you passed field after field on the way in, if you knew what to look for.

The corn had dutifully tasseled out, but the normally broad leaves were curled and thin. There wasn’t the lush embrace between stalks. Each seemed to keep to itself even in the close planted rows, like strangers in an elevator protecting their personal space.

Upon a closer look, the cobs on each stalk seemed… shorter. There would be less space to hold the very thing my friends were planting for. And it all came into focus.

The July rain hadn’t come for the corn.

All is not lost, though. There will be a harvest; but the yield will be smaller in comparison to years past. If the drought is widespread, the corn prices may tick up and soften the blow a bit. And my friends will hit it again next season and hope for better.

I looked through my camera lens at the blue sky relentlessly tugging at the corn for its moisture, almost pulling the stalk out of the ground with its force. And the corn stubbornly clinging to the soil, drawing from wherever it could for the sustenance it needed.

The tension is clear and mirrors the struggle these families endure year after year with joy, coaxing life from the earth.

And I clicked.

My longtime friend Kirk says, “July rain for corn, August rain for soybeans.”

Let’s hope that greedy sky is kinder to the beans.