For some reason last night I was wide awake until 3am. I shut everything off and attempted to get some sleep but no luck. I was back up at the refrigerator drinking a lot of ice cold water. I was still wide awake but finally tried to get some sleep at 5am.That sleep lasted until 6:15am when Winston started his hound dog howling letting me know he needed to go out ASAP, if not immediately. I was wide awake and even took a few photos at 6:15am ... but a little mystified why I didn't feel tired after no sleep?
The morning even had a strange look to it as you can see by the first two photos taken at 6:15am.
I also had zero pain last night, so teeth and jaw pain was not the reason for lack of sleep.
I felt so good even after an hour of sleep, that I decided to head about 20 miles south for a Breakfast Buffet ... bad tooth and all. No problems in the pain area, was able to keep the meal on the right side of my mouth and have a few plates of food without injury.
I knew eventually I'd need some sleep sometime, after all the first NFL pre-season game of the year is on tonight at 8pm .. The Hall of Fame game. I know it's only a pre-season game and the regular starters will play about 1 series of downs that could be no more than 3 plays ... but when you are a football addict ... football in August is like Christmas morning.
Yes ... I even watch the Canadian Pro Football League that is on tv now. I like some of their different rules and styles of play.
So with the cool temps and the sun breaking through the early morning fog ... I was able to get some quality sleep from 8:30am till 1pm. I felt so good when I woke up I got some house cleaning finished and was able to take the hounds outside mid afternoon to enjoy the weather and take some photos.
Heidi once again refused to go outside and instead chose to take perfectly folded washed blankets on the floor and make a pile of them to sleep on in the nice cool air conditioned living room. She was going to get a bath and manicure this morning but my schedule changed a little. So her bath has been moved to Sunday morning, and the kind of shampoo to use is still being determined. Her nails will be cut back as much as possible and those ears will be smelling like baby wipes after I am done.
So the two hounds that love to go outside whenever I ask decided to check some smells out. Winston has found something in the grass/weed area that he likes to eat, so he had a meal of that. He eats there every morning. Sadie was pretty sure something had been around her house recently and was curious enough to press her nose into the side of the house to further investigate the potential intruder.
When I was snapping photos of trees, the sky, weeds and things other than hounds ... the two hounds decided they would stroll down the driveway in a direction they are not allowed to go. Due to the highway at the bottom of the hill, they are not allowed past the front of the house and they follow that rule 99.9% of the time ... sometimes they just get adventurous.
Of course when I yelled their names, since they are hound dogs, they ignored me the first time like they are suppose to do, it's in their DNA. After a couple of more times of yelling their names, they acknowledged they had been caught and started their slow stroll back up the driveway towards me, looking at me as if they were innocent and had never left the backyard.
They are a funny pair and a good pair of hounds.
As you see as a result of the record amount of rain in the month of June, everything is green and all those weeds in the driveway and along the bank that I had killed with expensive weed killer last month ... grew back 4x as fast and 4x as tall. I have something else planned for their elimination but I'll have to go to a farm store to buy it.
As you see that clear and burned off fence line in April is over 6' tall in growth. Even those green tall stalks where Winston was eating was burned to the ground in April. There is one thing consistent with everyone of them. Hopefully some readers that have landscaping experience can chime in some helpful suggestions.
When those 6' plants were small I took a leaf of theirs inside and searched on google images to see what I was dealing with. I'm serious when I say everything you see is the same plant/tree sapling. My best guess from the type of leaf, the one pictured below .. they are all Sassafras saplings.
Now the thing is I don't mind that the are filing in the fence line and I don't care that they are trees. I use to have a fence line full of trees until the straight line wind damage in 2008, that blew them down or tore them out of the ground. I burned everything in April to get rid of a lot weeds, horse grass and while berry bushes.
Still, I don't want to have any trees in a spot that is about 2/3 of the way down the drive because they would eventually grow tall enough where they would be a problem for the reception from my DirecTv and Exede Satellite Internet dishes. Due to my house location I have no other choices for tv and an internet provider, plus I like both services as they have worked out fantastic.
I have had DirecTv since the late 90's when they bought out a company called Prime Star that was my tv service provider back then. As far as using Verizon here at home like people do on the road .. price is about the same but no comparison in "speed". Plus I get 15Gb per month but the difference from other companies, between midnight and 5am I get free unlimited data.
So let the trees grow but I will be cutting them next spring in that one spot to keep my satellite dishes receiving good reception from space. If anyone knows or thinks they know what is growing based on those photos, let me know.
Since we are talking plants, trees, green etc .. this next photo is interesting. You might think that I have taken this photo out in the hay field in back but I am disappointed to say it was taken in my backyard. It's disappointing because of all the time and money spent .. buying and applying grass fertilizer, some Scott's Weed & Feed, extra watering before the rains came in June .. only to see a photo of this one section of yard that has very little grass, some clover, some weeds and a lot of nothing when it comes to a yard.
That is the spot where all the grass was killed last year due to the Class C Coachmen that was parked their from September to March 2014. It was reseeded with grass and even more grass seed was added this year. Compared to Winston's photo up above where you can see he is in a yard of good green grass and no weeds, this spot is pretty different.
I gave up on the war against yard moles years ago when I found nothing worked. I tried everything over the 18 years I've been here. I was even desperate enough one year to actually buy those electronic sensors that took about 3 D cell batteries, that would send out different unheard tones to keep the moles away. Luckily I used my 90 day return policy at Walmart and got a refund. The most fun I've ever had fighting the war against yard moles ... was digging out their holes just a little for more access, pouring gasoline into the mole track and following that with a lit match.
People were calling me Bill Murray from his movie Caddie Shack.
There were enough out of control underground explosions that I had to stop since I was becoming concerned about my house foundation and any underground water pipes. So a few years ago I let the moles know they had won and if 1/2 of my back yard feels like walking on a sponge while I mow ... then so be it.
As you can tell it was a pretty lazy Saturday here in "the tropics" ... but someone has to do it. Isn't that what retirement is all about? For those thinking they might retire and might get bored ... I can say as an ex workaholic ... retirement is beautiful and I have loved every day of it ... you can do anything you want, when you want.
What's a meeting? It was great to escape all of those.
Now, the big test will be with football season around the corner ... will I stay on my diet of no grain, no Pepsi, no chips ... all that food normally consumed while watching football games hour after hour?
My experience says no ... but we will see.
No comments:
Post a Comment