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 Our plants continue to lose leaves, but not fast enough for
me. The plants are standing well which surprises me. I thought
we would have more stalk lodging (stalks falling over) because of stem
weevil damage, but I'm not complaining.
 Because we've been taking pictures in the mornings, we've been facing
west the whole season. But it's about 1:30 pm right now, so for a
change I thought we would go to the west side of the field and look back to
the east. Do you see any differences from this direction? Well,
from this view we get to see the back of the heads and I think the plants at
this end of the field aren't as big and they don't have as many leaves still
attached. The soil at the east end of the field is probably a little
better because it's not as eroded as the west end.
 The back of the heads are still turning brown and these have head moth
and Rhizopus damage.
 This is a close-up of bird damage. The birds are having a feast
every day and all day long. We've had some cool night temperatures so
we don't have as many mourning doves now.
 Do you remember early in the growing season when we were so worried about
weeds? Well, what we have here is several cocklebur plants at the edge
of the field. These plants are very competitive and would have caused
a reduction in sunflower yields had we not removed them.
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