I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have Sadie getting me away from my morning coffee, out of my desk chair and out into the field every morning. She will always sit quietly at the doorway into my computer room. While sitting straight and proud, almost like a pose, she will give me her stare down letting me know that it's time for a walk. This also happens throughout the day no matter where I might be.
It's going to be another beautiful day here in the tropics. I've adjusted to the colder temps and have waved bye to summer. I love hot weather but I do like the change of seasons. There is a little bit of good in every season and each has it's highlights with likes and dislikes. The hounds? Same stuff different day and I'm not sure they even care about the changes.
You might notice my photos lately on these morning walks are a little bit brighter or better quality. I have had some strange adjustments to the Daylight Savings time change we did last weekend. Where I should be getting up an hour earlier I seem to be going to bed an hour later and getting up later. That slides the morning walk from around 9am to 10am or later, thus the change in lighting for taking pictures.
Whenever I see Stella ahead of Sadie on these walks and/or Sadie venturing into the heavy brush between the field and woods, I suspect there has been a lot of deer traffic in the early morning hours. The local news on tv and in the newspaper is saying there is an over abundance of deer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. Some of the state parks are closing to the public, only open to deer hunters to thin out the herd of deer roaming in the area.
When Sadie was staring at the woods earlier in the walk I thought I could even hear the footsteps of deer moving over the leaves that had fallen to the ground. I listened really closely and thought it would be the chance to walk into those woods, look down into the gulley to see if I could grab a picture or two of them. The sound I heard though was not deer but the sound of falling leaves.
The worn path on the taller brush near the back of the field shows where deer move from this field, jump over a very short old metal fence into the field behind us. Stella was sure this is where they went sometime before we got there. She is right. I remember about 7 years ago in December, Sadie as a 2 year old took off running in this same exact area, over that fence and into that field running as fast as possible for deer she saw. the 5-6 deer were out sprinting her by a mile but she thought she could catch them.
I couldn't catch her and it wasn't long before she was out of my sight. So I ran home to drive my truck around the the back of the field I had last seen her. I thought she might be sneaking around the huge turkey farm or at least see her wandering back home ... she was nowhere. I looked for an hour, it started snowing again and no sign of her. A little after 1pm I hear something hit my aluminum door in the carport ... there she stood ... 4 to 5 hours later. Needless to day she slept the rest of the day and almost missed her late afternoon meal.
So far Stella's periods of disappearances have lasted no longer than 45 minutes to an hour. She doesn't like to miss any meals and food is her real motivation for anything she does inside or out.
It's always interesting to observe the routines of all three hounds. They change their routines at times but most days I don't have to say a thing and they repeat the same walks day after day. As you know Heidi disappears from this blog and outside until cold weather is over ... she has always done that since I picked her up in June 2011.
Even when we are on the 'alternate' path home I can see other narrow single paths of worn grass where the deer run at night. Maybe I need to buy and set up a couple of field cameras to capture the wild life between midnight and 6am.
For the second day in a row the moon was back again. I noticed that Al up in Canada on The Bayfield Bunch blog took the same picture I did of the moon yesterday. It's times like these I wish I had a longer lens to get closer to the moon.
On the way back this morning the hounds kept drifting further away from me. I was getting down to two choices. Either leave them and let them do what they wanted knowing they would eventually come home or walk over to Stella and tug on her collar to get her back toward my direction. Many times she will start moving once she sees me heading her way.
Yesterday afternoon I did attempt to rake some leaves but those first few that flipped over with the rake was showing moisture on them. I would prefer to rake them completely dry so they will burn faster and better. Today might be Day 1 of the 2017 Leaf Project. Until I looked at past blogs for the post about our Leaf Project, I thought we were late this year but that is not the case. In 2016 we were raking them this week. In 2015 we were getting all the leaves taken care of in late October.
Here is the 2015 Leaf Project Supervision Crew.
Stella lagged behind at the end of the walk but nothing major. She stepped inside the yard and had to stop for one of her back scratching exercises. Once she saw Sadie and I almost ready to make the turn into the carport, she came running.
A tentative plan was to rake the leaves once they dried out a little more, possibly this afternoon. While the hounds took their lunch break outside they decided that not only were the leaves dry enough to rake but the grass was tall enough to mow. If I mowed first would it mulch the leaves good enough to get me out of raking?
Stella has been staring off into space a lot lately as if there are new places she would like to check out if only I would let her, or if only there wasn't a highway in that direction, if only ....
Sadie checked for some fresh soft mounds of dirt to eat since it rained this past weekend. You can also see with her standing in the yard just how tall the grass is after a weekend of rain. I've been told the ground is still warm although the temperatures have dropped, so mowing season may not be over yet.
I'm posting this because I like it and it's just a little bit different for a photo taken in the middle of the day.
For doing yard work you cannot beat weather like this.
I still wasn't happy with the amount of leaves left in the yard after mowing. I need a new rake since my old one was missing a few teeth after I had the plastic rake to near to the fire last year. I headed to the local hardware store and picked up a new one. Of course when I got home I had to try it out, so that is the 'clean' area you see. The wind was blowing from the south as I raked into it. So it was a good place to stop and wait for better wind conditions before raking the rest of the yard.
The heavy storms on Sunday washed out some of my old mulch, so a short trip to the landscaping biz where I bought a few bags of new Cyprus mulch to add today. I had to work fast because Sadie kept disappearing on me today but would come running when called. She was always too far outside her boundary.
It's good I stopped when I did. As I sat in front of the computer afterward with a cold glass of water, I had an email I needed to reply to for confirmation. One of the parts for the Z4 has to come from Germany and is delayed. My other parts are in route and due to arrive early next week. That gives me time to finish the leaves for the year.
Tomorrow I will trade parking spaces with the FJ, which will give me more room to work. I'll either drive the Z4 up on ramps or jack it up high enough to slide some jack stands underneath it. I am thinking the jack stands might be the best option while I am working under the car.
At a website called realOEM.com I was not only able to find a detailed diagram of the parts I needed but also where they go and what screws, nuts, plugs or clips go with each part. I've printed those out. With the help of those diagrams and some YouTube videos I have a clear picture of what the process will be to replace the damaged parts under the Z4.
I enjoy this type of work as long as it's on occasion and not a job. It just proves how old I am sometimes when my knees and back don't enjoy being in different position under a car to reach to connect a screw or snap in a part. I've made sure I have enough Ibuprofen in stock.
It was a great day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... much more done than expected.
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