This small bird did not mind Stella being about 5' away from her and Stella didn't mind the bird being on her driveway. Luckily Sadie was out in the field eliminating any chances of a bird chase.
It doesn't look good for this field with another inch of rain predicted by the end of this afternoon and even more tomorrow. Luckily the yard was dry enough to mow yesterday and much earlier than planned. I was finished by 1:30pm and spent the rest of the afternoon with ice tea and a good book.
I don't know, maybe it's because my 'free' data period has changed with the move to HughesNet to the hours between 2am - 8am. I don't have unlimited data like I did with Exede's 'free' period which took place between midnight and 5am but I do get an additional 50Gb of data per month. Whatever the reason, lately I've been asleep before midnight and up and moving by 6:30am.
With that earlier than normal wake up time, Sadie was at my desk an hour earlier this morning wanting her morning walk. Or maybe she knew the weather forecast. Stella was still asleep and Heidi is never walking that early nor with the field grass that wet. We took off a little past 8am.
Sadie took off right from the start of the walk. She wasn't waiting for me or Stella today. With it being this early, the field was extremely wet and my hiking boots were soaked only a short distance into the field.
It was nice to see Stella trotting past me up and heading up the path. It might be just my wishful thinking but I can tell a difference this week on top of her back and between her shoulders, where it is filling in where her spine and shoulder blades are not as visible as before, if at all.
She was in continues motion this morning with her nose to the ground all the way around the first turn. She only stopped once for less than a minute and moved on.
Sadie was the same way. Where she had stopped a few days ago deep in the green bushes after the first turn, she didn't today. She was on that deer path with her nose to the ground locked in.
Then they both picked up something pretty strong and they were off ... running full speed around the far right corner. I wasn't able to catch them on camera until after they made the turn.
With them moving this fast, I was concerned they were heading into the gully or back into those woods, which also drops in a steep drop off.
You have to wonder just how strong that scent is for them to take off like that and then imagine what they are thinking it is. From what I have read in different books, all of this scent tracking they do is their way of identifying what and who has been in the area.
Sadie went toward the gully and stopped, only to look back at me to see if I was coming after her. She did not move from that spot. She had found something to eat.
Stella headed the opposite direction, with both of them chowing down on some natural protein.
This morning I wanted to see what they would do if I did not go after them. As usual, once Sadie realized that I was walking away she came running full-speed to catch me.
She never stopped running and blew by me to the back edge of the field.
Stella was not moving. I thought briefly that it might be one of those days where I walk all the way home and then drive the Mini Countryman back to this location to have her run back to the house, following the car. I did that last year with the Toyota FJ.
I kept walking and used the zoom lens at 200mm to look through the view finder to keep track of her. You can barely see her in the center of the picture.
This is shot at 50mm, which is the view that my eyes are looking at. She is still there in the center of the picture next to the edge of the woods. Sadie was looking in that direction waiting for me to give her the command to "go get Stella" but I wanted to keep walking and see if Stella would run full-speed to catch us.
Sadie and I had made the last turn home and when I glanced over I didn't see Stella. I started my slow walk in that direction calling her name. It was then I saw her at the edge of the field and woods behind the tall grass.
The three pictures I took of that walk and finding her were not in focus ... so this picture shows where she thinks she is going to continue the walk in the normal direction instead of walking back with me to the path we were on.
Again, it wasn't warm this morning, mid 40's and as you can see that rain is coming from the southwest. Radar was showing the storm front was about 200 miles away when we started the walk.
That is Stella in the lead and her sly way of quietly sneaking off to the right toward the neighbor's woods as if I cannot see her. She actually thinks every time that she is going to get away with it. She seems to like the words "over here" and returns to the path when I say that to her.
Before going inside Sadie needed to checkout my lawn mowing from yesterday, one more time.
Stella slowly returned to the yard following every inch of the path and not veering off. She was back to sleep behind my desk chair within minutes after coming inside.
I am now on the clock so to speak with HughesNet. I'll still be using my Excel spreadsheet to log in my daily data use. With the graph I inserted I can tell if I am using too much data as the month progresses. After their 20 days of free data for new customers, I will get my full allotment of 20Gb for the last 10 days of my billing period.
Their webpage that shows my data is much better than I had with Exede and shows the balances on my monthly allotment and the 50Gb's I get every month between 2am-8am. It also tells me how many days/hours/minutes before the next reset.
As it gets darker outside as I type this, it looks like it will be another afternoon inside reading while the rain pours outside. It's typical spring weather with a good chance of rain every day until Sunday and then six days of nice sunshine.
I have finalized my 'to do' list on a Word Document and a lot of items will be completed once the temperature are up in the 70's. Nothing hard but time consuming, regular annual maintenance that goes with house ownership.
I am adding a new blog to the sidebar, from an online friend of mine. Who would have ever thought of pelicans spending time in Minnesota while it's still cold, but here they are ... click here.
I have realized that most of the things I put off doing around here isn't really procrastination like I thought. I looked back through my blog and found that I like doing the 'to do' items when it's hot weather day after day. The hotter the better. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.
Dark and dreary this morning in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.
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