Rain Makes Me Ramble

This was happening around 8:25am local this morning. I saw on another weather site that before the rain that started last night, we had 51.3" for the year. That 1.6" in upper right corner was a lot more than tv weather told me I would get. I wondered last night if I might prefer it to be colder with snow for easier clean up of hounds and dogs paws. I will talk about my new system of saving my sanity and keeping my floors clean. Otherwise, this weather gave me the urge early this morning to put this post together and ramble a little bit.

The interesting thing is, my yard looks worse this morning. These six photos were taken around 7:30am on Friday morning. By 10:30 I could see the water level going down and by 12:15pm it was all gone. Last fall when I saw what the summer had done to my yard after I had decided too late to water it, I knew I was in for a muddy winter. Mud mud mud, is what happens when you mix rain with bare dirt.

With the leaves falling off the trees much later this year I was not able to reseed the yard this fall. I mowed leaves to mulch and that would have only scattered the grass seed if I had planted. So I guess for 2024 December, the moon and stars were NOT lined up for a reasonable winter yard.

This is our 4th winter here. This winter is almost identical to last December at this time. My blog is a good reference for that and my huge photo library confirms it. The difference is last year I left the grass taller than 3" and I had grass where it is not bare dirt/mud. It does not help though when I see more small holes than I want to see ... that small pond you see with brown water. That is a German Shepherd doing what they do ... dig.

I don't know how I missed that on my research about GS before deciding to get AVA but I must admit, if I had known GS's are diggers I would not have taken her. 

Every year I seem to send photos of my December yard mess to my friend up the street that has lived here for almost 25 years and to my other friend up in the area that I lived before. Both told me this summer's extreme heat killed their grass just like mine. Neither have dogs though and it does make a difference. Yes, dogs will cause wear and tear on a yard especially with sprinting from one side to another and the sun is so hot it is baking the leaves on the trees, making them fall into the yard.

After trying a few ways over the four years of battling wet yard that leads to wet dog/hound paws, that track on the floor when they come inside ... I have finally come up with a system that is working pretty well. Granted I only started ALL the steps on Friday but I had tried a few of the steps over the years. I just didn't have the right equipment. I do now. 

I let the dogs out the patio door. Then I open the door to the shed that is built on the back of my garage, then the door to the garage and at times yell their names for them to come into the house that way. Like any training the more they do it the more they get use to the routine. Even Walter is trainable. LOL

I have a large towel laid out in front the steps inside the garage and each step covered with the smaller hand towels. By the time they walk inside the mudroom and kitchen, they have clean dry paws. 

Every spring I have done what two landscaping companies told me they would do ... fill the low spots in with topsoil and plant new seed. I have done that now every March that I have lived here and they still keep coming back. 

Yet hours later and into the late afternoon and night, they still want to go outside. The yard does not have standing water but it is soft, soggy enough from over saturation where dog paws are a problem. It is also easier to let them back in the patio door instead of the garage route. This is where the Bona Microfiber Cleaning Pad is worth a million dollars. This is no way an affiliate link, just a photo from the internet.

My friend told me when she had four dogs and the same issues that I had trying to keep the floors dry and clean, she attached a 16x16 fiber cloth to a Rubbermaid mop and cleaned up the wet paw marks with that. I went to Lowes and found 16x16 fiber clothes right next to the Rubbermaid mop and was about to purchase it when I remember I had the Bona at home and it did come with a fiber cloth mop head that I had not used yet. I decided to try that first thinking it should work just like my friend's idea would. 

It works better than expected. 

Like any year that is getting close to an end, I want to or feel like I need to change things. Sometimes that is redesigning this blog, sometimes it was buying a new/different car or truck, sometimes it is using a different coffee maker. I bought this Cuisinart in 2019 and have gone back and forth between this and the one made by Bunn. There are pluses for both. This one fits under the cabinets better, takes less room, uses less coffee grounds/beans for the same strong coffee ... and it makes a hotter coffee.

Walter has never been a fan of any kind of weather that is just not perfect. Not too hot, not too cold, preferably dry ... but he has surprised me during the days and nights of rain that he will go outside unless he hears it raining ... he does what he needs to do and then sprints back to the step in front of the patio door. I follow him with the mop and clean his tracks. 

I am sure there have been a few readers wondering, possibly even bothered by me having three hounds and two dogs. Is there room for them? How crowded is his house when they are all inside? Unless they are sleeping on the couches and dog beds while I watch tv or outside in the yard, it is pretty hard to get all five into one photo. I was getting ready to fix some dinner and for some reason they thought they would get a bite or two from what I was eating. That rarely happens. To answer any questions though, the only time it feels like I have too many is when I wake up in the morning and my bed is surrounded by them wanting to go outside and start their day.

No matter the weather, the squirrels still torment Ava and Watson. Luckily when I took this photo from standing inside and shooting through the patio door glass, Ava did not see it in her yard. She goes insane when she sees a squirrel in the yard and of course the squirrels know that and they know she cannot catch them. 

The morning routine is outside, back inside for breakfast, back outside for Ava to play a little plus Walter does not go outside until he has eaten where the other four go outside as soon as I get up. After their second trip outside they all take a nap. Wake me up, get fed then go back to sleep ... quite a life.

It doesn't happen often but at times all five will be in the computer room sleeping while I drink coffee, read the internet or put a blog post together. When I need to get up and walk out of the computer room, I hear myself say "I have too many dogs" ... still I cannot picture them or even imagine them living anywhere else and not together. I don't know the reasons but they all found me when I never had plans for more hounds after Heidi and Stella passed. 

Do my neighbors yards flood like mine? Yes, they do. They too are backed up against that corn/soybean field that slopes toward our yards. They both have green grass too. This yard is treated by TruGreen. It also has small drains in the yard you cannot see and a $10,000 pipe system under their yard to send the water back to the field. She told me on the tour that it does not work as good as it should and they still get standing water in the backyard. One thing different, I don't have a basement and she has a livable basement.

On the other side, her yard is treated by Organic Fertilizer. Her backyard slopes towards her house, the natural grade of the field and area. She told me years ago they brought in dump trucks full of dirt to level their yard as much as possible, plus they were getting rid of their tennis court. Both have lived here since they were kids and have told me numerous times that my backyard has had a flooding problem since the 1960s.

This was Ava late morning Friday. You can see how much water drained just in a three hour periods. She is also standing on my septic field. If you remember a few weeks ago I talked about Natura-Turf as a possible solution to my problem. I looked at all the videos on Friday but saved the best information for last. .... How much was it going to cost me?

$525 for a sheet that was 3'x3'x43" .... just from those numbers and the photos of the mud area ... it was not going to be cost effective. Back to more topsoil, new seed and fenced off this coming March. 

With all the rain, a lot of college football bowl games I just was NOT interested in watching ... I figured a long siesta would work. Maybe I could wake up and the yard would be fixed and all this rain was just a dream. The siesta did not work for yard repair but as I was slowly coming back to reality the thought of a Marie Callender's Cherry Pie with vanilla ice cream overran my brain cells.

The feeling was so strong that I was able to sneak out of the house into the garage to make my trip to Walmart without waking up the hounds and dogs that were still sleeping ... except ... Walter. He can be in a deep sleep and if he hears me quietly picking up my car keys off the counter, he is sprinting down the hallway to the kitchen to see where I am going or if I am going somewhere.

Needless to say, a 19 minute round trip to the store and back home, a few minutes to preheat the oven and another 40 minutes to bake the frozen pie and then another 10 or 15 for the crumbs to be browned ... I had hot cherry pie and ice cream within a few minutes of an hour from waking up. I did not even wait for the pie to cool for the even cut ... I couldn't wait.

By this afternoon a little past 12:30pm, the yard will look like this. Most of the water will be gone but one difference today from Friday ... the winds are howling right now and the temperature is dropping from the 50s to the 30s ... luckily the Bona mop can work in cold or hot weather for those summer rains. I have a bad weather system for the hounds and dogs finally worked out, with the short trials of different steps and equipment have all come together. 

These areas will be fenced off in the spring with new seed, more topsoil mixed with some landscaping sand. Photos of that project most likely will be blogged about since there isn't much else happening in my life except routine house and yard maintenance, year after year. LOL

A side note about that low hanging Astound Internet Cable they keep lying to me about ... I filed a claim with the Better Business Bureau yesterday. I have only done that one time before with Verizon and had instant results. 

I have watched videos that will supposedly tell me how to keep Ava from digging. I know she is a working class dog that needs a LOT of physical and mental stimulation. She walks daily unless it is pouring rain. She runs in the yard, she is taught new commands and loves trying to get those pieces of dog bone treats out of the kong ball ... that is if she can keep possession of the kong ball from the larger hounds.

Buy more kong balls? I have those but if you remember the Bloodhound Rules I posted years ago ... Watson or Cletus wants ALL the kong balls. 

For those that have not been introduced to the Bloodhound Rules ... here they are. 

You would be surprised just how many of those rules are seen live, in action around here.

Rainy weather or the end of another year always makes me reflect on the past. I love where I live now but there are times I really wish I had this 7 acre field behind my house. I enjoy the hound walks then, twice per day in good weather. That field is still baled although things have changed a little up there. 

It was hard to believe that eventually all the hounds, we didn't have dogs up there, just hounds ... but hard to believe that hounds with the noses they had, would walk to and from the house on their own pace off leash. We walked the same path so much you could see it on the Google Satellite Maps.

At times a thought will pop into my head ... "should I have stayed there in 2019 instead of moving? I could have spent less money than I did when I bought the house in Sierra Vista AZ, upgrading the small house where I along with two bloodhounds and two basset hounds lived for many years. 

Then I remember the feeling I had every morning sitting on my patio with a cup of coffee and seeing the Huachuca Mountains all the time. Those mountains gave me an energy that I had nowhere else. Looking at that photo that I took standing at my back fence in the yard, doesn't do what they did in real time.

Yes, I made the right decision in 2019 but I probably should have kept that small house with the field as a backup, "just in case things change", a couple of friends suggested.

If I didn't have this backyard water issue at this house, this would be the perfect place to live. That field pictured above slanted toward the far right corner of my yard. It has unground water but I was able to install some perforated pipe and redirect that water back into the woods behind the house near where I would have my burn pile. At times I would have standing water in the grassed backyard but nothing as messy as where I am now. This house has a French Drain around the whole house but I don't have anywhere to run the water if I were to install more drainage pipe. 

A few of you know I am not a winter person. I like hot weather. So on days like today it is easy to remember the hot weather when Stella would sleep under the hot sun in the yard up north or even in the field sometimes. 

Winston was like Henry ... he liked all kinds of weather .. the changes never bothered him.

I had just rescued Heidi from GABR the day before this photo. It was after her second walk in the field, August low 90s but she loved it.

Maybe 15 minutes ago I got up to let Ava, Watson and Cletus out. It was a normal time where they still have to empty their tanks so to speak. But the puddles on the patio deck showed it was raining lightly but a steady rain. No problem, I turned and headed to open the door out to the garage thinking the hounds would go out into the yard when they wanted to, rain or no rain.

Cletus doesn't like rain but he headed out to the garage anyway to get some water. I do have a large water bowl out there too, so they can get water in bad weather. They are sloppy when they drink so the garage floor is better than a wet tile floor in my mudroom.

I get up to get coffee ... and see Ava running in the rain. I grabbed my camera to catch whatever I could. 

Both are in the rain but I was not happy to see Ava digging at another small hole. Her digging is driving me nuts to be honest. If I stop one, she does another. I do not think this is something she will grow out of either. At times I second guess my decision in rescuing her as a puppy because the owner "needed to find her a good home" since they both worked long hours.

Watson was more than happy to come inside but you can tell that they are coming back inside through the patio door. The mop worked great under stressful situation. I wasn't stressed about it but there was a LOT of wet paw prints to capture with the microfiber mop head. 

No worries, I am almost finished with this senseless rambling ... but I have something else to get off my chest.

Politics. 

Since the 2016 election for reasons I will not get into again, I have lost long time friends due to Trump winning the election, losing the 2020 election and Biden policies on immigration there were more friends lost and a few more with this last 2024 election.

Recently there have been two friends that I can only assume we are now ex-friends since Trump won in 2024. I never liked the man per se but I liked his policies better than the alternative. I knew what he was like because many years ago I worked for a small family business where they were from Chicago and one of the owners thought he was Trump by the way he acted. Big city business people, in my experience act just like Trump does. 

Anyway that is a whole different story I will not get into .. back to my friends that may no longer be friends. 

In recent years we would speak by emails or blog comments and now there is total silence with no replies to emails I have sent to both of them. 

Reading Al's Blog last night sadden me. I understand his frustration with technology, Kelly and I use to trade emails when she was trying to find out a solution to problems with their blog, computers or a new smart phone. I also understand too well all that he is going through after losing the love of his life ... I am not even sure I would be able to do anything during the day. 

The thing is I could help Al with his iPhone 15 problem. I own and use the same phone. I could help him with online banking and let him know the process as I check my accounts online multiple times per day and some have their text message with a coded number so I can gain access. In the future I could help him with any issues that Blogger is going to present him. Blogger will have issues eventually, always does.

I sent him an email last week to offer my help that he would need in the future and what he needed then. I didn't get a reply and I know why ... he hates Trump and I like Trump's policies. I know that he will not talk to me because of that, no matter how bad his phone, computer or blog issues get. I also know since his post back in November where he looked at the sky "thanking my lucky stars" he lived in Canada and not the USA with Trump as President ... he has not been back to read my blog, where in the past he would stop by ever few days or so. 

The second friend is one I use to talk to at length with, for hours and hours when I was trying to decide which RV or trailer to buy. If I could or should travel with bloodhounds and basset hounds. We both drove FJ Cruisers, both had more than two dogs. Over the years we spoke less frequently and she said she knew what we were doing by reading my blog.

Yet, every time I would send an email asking if she was okay, how she was doing, I would always get an answer. I haven't received a reply to two emails I have sent this month. We last traded email last summer. At our age when you quit hearing from people it might be because they have died. So there is that to think about but in her case I got a notice from Amazon she had released another book this past October.

Since then the election took place. I had posted some posts after that about Trump and the hurricane in NW North Carolina. I took them down a day or two later due to the responses and a threat that I had received. But back in 2016 she knew why I would be voting for him.

So have I lost another long time friend over stupid politics? Between death and politics I am running out of friends.

With all that pie and ice cream gone and evidently due to not enough Vitamin B in my diet .. my craving for desert is off the charts this morning at 10:43am. I am not sure if I have the motivation to get out of the house to go buy anything. I am in some severe hibernation mode right now.

One thing I want to leave you with though after all this rambling, possibly complaining about my messed up backyard .... I AM WELL AWARE that I have it so much better than many do at this time as they still try to recover from Hurricanes in Florida and the one in North Carolina. I might get more rain today but it will not be anything like those tornado warnings moving through the south and southeast. 

I have not checked the news or weather websites yet today so I don't know what the latest news is.

This was just senseless rambling on a rainy morning where I have been a little bored lately and felt the urge to talk. With fewer friends around, this is one place I can communicate with people. 

Happy New Year to all from "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.