When I drive to work in the morning, this is what I look at.

Miles and miles of green Iowa farmland.

I suppose it’s idyllic, but I’ve lived out in the country long enough that I have to deliberately enjoy my surroundings to notice them at all.

Below is the stop sign at the end of my gravel road where it intersects with Hwy 34. That’s about a thousand acres of corn there on the far side of the blacktop.

This morning was gorgeous. The sky was clear and blue, the air wasn’t 110 degrees, everything looked green and lush.

The rain yesterday and last night really, really helped. I actually used a light blanket last night, and turned off the A/C for the first time in many days. (I like a hot day just fine, but when it’s over a hundred Nature’s just showing off. I don’t think it’s funny when stuff in my car melts in the time it takes me to get home from the grocery store.)

I drive past several thousand acres of feed corn and soybeans every day. My house sits in the bottom of a U-shape of cropland; this year they’re growing mostly feed corn on all the surrounding acreage. Sometimes it’s soybeans. It means we’re not very close to our nearest neighbor, and on corn years it means Brett and I say “Knee high by the fourth of July!” to each other at least once, and we’re not even farmers.

On bean years, I stop and eat some on the way to swimming in the triangle pond and think about picking and blanching some for a nice edamame snack. (I never get around to it, and eat all my edamame at sushi restaurants.)

Another way of putting it is that we live right in the middle of where they grow the millions of bushels of feed corn needed to feed to the pigs that become your breakfast bacon, and I test our ponds and well water every year or two for fertilizer and pesticides.

But it’s quiet, and we can see millions of stars at night.

All in all, a pleasant drive to work this morning with the blue sky and the windows down and the breeze and the rain-washed smells. Not a lot of things better than the morning after a cooling summer rain.

P.S. I love my camera phone. Ho-ly SHIT, people. It takes crappy low-res pictures, but it’s so fun.