The Hounds Were Active This Morning

Weather Underground is telling me we have only two more days of highs in the 70's. By Tuesday we will be back in the 50's and 60's and the toughest decisions of the day will be whether to keep wearing shorts or change to jeans. As you can see, we have some new truck tire prints on the path this morning ... visitors last night were all over the field in a pickup truck and a speeding ATV.

It looked like someone was either getting driving lessons in the truck or the chance to drive without a license ... which is normal around here in a farming community. With that traffic stirring up all kinds of scents ... Sadie and Stella had a "field day" this morning.

All that beautiful sunshine yesterday was hiding behind some clouds this morning. It felt like rain could be on the way, but that is not scheduled until Sunday night. This year has not been a good year in my location at least, for weather forecast accuracy. We will see what happens with clear gutters and a lawn that is mowed.

The air had a slight touch of smoke this morning. I am not the only one burning stuff around here and the campfire last night, next door, lasted well past midnight so that fall smell of smoke is a common occurrence. With Stella showing some energy early this morning and Sadie doing her normal darting from one scent to another I could tell they were going to be pretty busy on the walk. I kept my eye out for deer just in case.

When they suddenly stopped their jog at the first time, almost in unison, I knew something was up ... they were serious this morning and were definitely going to catch anything they could find that had been trespassing. They 'think' they own this field just like the Bloodhound Laws state at the top of this blog. Yet it is owned by a neighbor that doesn't care what we do in the field except catching it on fire like he did years ago.

The hounds went from noses to the ground to an all out sprint to the middle of the field, including Stella. I saw no signs of deer anywhere but I thought they both were headed for the woods to the north and had 'seen' something I had not. I wasn't running yet and hoped I didn't have to. After my productive day yesterday there are a few unknown muscles feeling it today ... like soreness.

Could it be that one of the new truck tire tracks is what stopped them? That doesn't seem right by the way the took off sprinting. They are not really rabbit hunters like Heidi is so that couldn't have been the reason. Whatever it was they both stopped as fast as they started their sprint. My 200mm lens could barely pick them up ... being a long way off I was happy to see them stop when they did

I yelled loudly "hey, over here" ... Sadie came sprinting to me as always ... Stella need more time to identify what they had found.

She decided she had enough and wanted to get back to Sadie and I ... without calling her ... here she came, running faster than she had in many months.

They both didn't hesitate in getting back on the task at hand ... search, and identify.

Am I correct thinking that these are a small saplings of some kind? All future trees in the field and so close together. This patch was right behind the hounds in the picture above.

Sadie led the way ... Stella followed.

This is one of her favorite spots to stop and scratch ... if the rolls of hay were there, she would be just in front of them or up by our final turn home.

Since the back part of the field had been checked out, they both ran in the direction of the house again leaving me way behind. It's good that they can run off leash, something that many bloodhound owners have told me they would never do, no matter how big a field was.

Luckily the alternate path home puts me pretty close to Stella on the right side of the picture.

What I wouldn't give to find out what these two are thinking when they stop like this.

The bright colored leaves are few this year but right next to the yard.

In early September my burn pile looked like this. A lot of those green weeds had died this past month. The taller ragweed on the left side out of the view of the photo has really died off. Ill not burn them but will do what I did last year ... cut them down with the mower. Jim was happy to have it cut but it gives Sadie a clear path into the woods. She liked doing that last winter.

While taking the hounds out for their last trip of the night last night around 10:30pm I noticed one small ember in the pile of ashes. I walked over to check to see if anything else could spread while I slept.

So yesterday with some matches and help from a rake, that burn pile went from the picture above to the one below. Over the winter a new pile will start with fallen tree limbs from the high winds and the winter storms we get. There have been some years the burn pile has grown big enough by March or April that I have to burn again.

I doubt that I will have another blog post tonight. I start my weekly football marathon at noon and will finally turn off the tv and the lights around 2:30am, after the last west coast game is finished. The hounds will still get their 2 meals, 2-3 walks, same amounts of sleep in their normal places while I watch the games.

I am glad that Tom recommended the GarminVivoSmart watch last May. It is accurate and provides a lot of information ... at times too much info. It vibrates telling me to "move" if I have been at the computer too long or on the couch watching games. It can sort out my deep sleep from light sleep plus show me the times I get up during the night if I do. It will even tell me who is calling or sending me a text ... by name. If I forget to stop the timer after our walks, it will stop it for me later, then I can go into their app and edit the time and distance for that walk.

I bought it mostly for tracking my resting and active heart rate.

Not much else is going on this morning. It's cool with the windows open. Stella has spent the last hour licking her paws and legs dry ... she cannot stand leaving them wet after we do our morning walk. Sadie always lays by her water bowl protecting it as she sleeps until lunch is served. Heidi has not moved since breakfast, as usual.

Oh, I almost forgot ... I've added a few new blogs to the blog sidebar on the right. One has a basset hound where the title of her latest post was "Basset Hibernation" so Heidi is not the only basset that knows what time of year it was. I am slowly getting back to the 50 or more blogs I listed over the years here. It is the easiest way to see new posts by bloggers I follow but also gives blog readers a chance to read other blogs. I like the side bar more than I like them listed in my Feedly account.

The "labels" were changes yesterday to around 90 topics now in a list format instead of a cloud format. The times I have tested the search box in the upper right doesn't give me the accurate results as the Labels list does. Right after I post this I am changing the title from 'labels' to 'topics'.

I admit after almost two weeks (tomorrow) of blogging again, it's nice to be back blogging and taking photos.

It sure sounds quiet today, almost too quiet for a Saturday here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Stella Supervises Burn Pile Fire

For me to pull the ladder out of the carport shed I need to back out the FJ. The hounds always think they are going for a ride when that happens. Once Sadie and Stella decided we were not going anywhere, Stella headed for the back yard for a nap, Sadie went to the field to roam and Heidi wandered all parts of the yard. I was preparing to go on the roof to walk along the edge and clean out the gutters full with leaves. I finished everything I wanted to do this afternoon except Operation Hound Nails was moved to Saturday morning before the weekly college football marathon.

For some reason Heidi always finds the edge of the bank interesting enough that she will slowly walk the full length with her nose to the ground. With the temps up to 77°, she spent all afternoon outside.

Since I live outside the "city" limits, this burning is legal. The pile was started last fall with tree limbs the had blown down over the winter. In March when I cleared the bank small saplings were added and then added again with large tree limbs and leaves when REMC trimmed the trees around their power lines. I was surprised how dry the pile was after 7 months. A match held to a few leaves and within a minute I had a large flame.

These leaves never caught fire but they were smoldering ... I watered them down with my hose while the pile burned below. I also sprayed water on the dead ragweed and all the green growth behind the fire to keep it out of the woods.

I glanced over into the field and found Sadie staring back at me, checking to see if she could continue roaming the field. She had been out there for more than an hour. I needed to put up the hose and the rake, then clear out all the leaves that had blown up next to the house. I was going to rake them into the yard and mulch them with the mower but thought the easiest way was rake them and then after 3 barrels (32gl) full of leaves I could burn them.

I put Stella in charge of watching the last of the fire just to make sure nothing shot out of that pile of ashes while I put all the tools up and pulled the FJ back into it's parking spot. She must have thought everything was under control because after a few minutes sitting and staring at the burning pile she decided a nap was the better option.

If you look closely you will see the butterfly.

Another thing on the list for this afternoon was buying some new Cyprus Mulch to fill in this side over the older stuff. On the side opposite the carport it was mostly dirt after the Japanese Yews were pulled out. The holes they left were filled back in but there was hardly any old mulch left.

Of course Stella and Sadie needed to make sure I had estimated the correct amount of mulch.

I will sand that rusted steel in front of my crawlspace and paint that the same color as my front door ... a dark brown or maybe a light utility gray. I am still undecided what I am going to plant here next spring. Here are the before and after photos.

I am concerned the Azaleas will not survive the winter. To keep them living so far I had to water them every few days because they don't get enough rain water. A few of them in front of the carport are too far under the wide overhang to get the full amount of rain. I am pretty sure you will not see me blogging about being out here in the middle of winter, in 20-30 degree weather watering them.

I liked that the Yews had a great green color year round and the only thing I had to do was trim them a couple of times per year. The problem was this last time I trimmed them, their stems were getting so large that my electric trimmers could not handle the diameter of the stems. Plus I did not know if their root system was deep enough that it was damaging my septic tank system.

I do like the open space in front of the house. It's easier to get into the crawlspace since I don't have to crawl through and under the Japanese Yews that were blocking the entry. It will also be easier to to drain the septic tank from the inlet side.

We fit in 3 hound walks today by 5:15pm, plus the yard work, etc ... I am tired but have only one baseball game to watch tonight. It will be early today bed tonight (~midnight) so I will be rested for my 14 or more hours of college football on Saturday.

My jaw was killing me last night between 5pm and 1am ... today there was no pain at all. Strange.

It was a successful afternoon here in 'the tropics' today ... gutters cleaned out and I didn't have to call the local Fire Department to put my fire out.

Retirement Works Even In Bad Weather

As a warning today, there will be some 'rambling' in this morning's post. This post IS LONG. I'm sure after a month or so of not blogging publicly there are some things to catch up on. Yet the way my brain is lately, not everything will be remembered at the same time to post so they might be scattered over the next few days. Sadie and Stella must have figured out they were back in their infamous limelights ... They did some things yesterday afternoon and this morning they had not done in months.

With a Sunday afternoon of steady light rain and some very early this morning ... the field and ground were saturated with water but nothing that my hiking boots couldn't handle. As you see in the top photo, with a new blog Stella attempted to start her walk her own way ... like due north and away from Sadie and I. She stopped right there when I called her name and slowly walked our direction ... she is stubborn as ever.

I have been letting her roam on her own on the morning walks but by the afternoon the walks have a require time limit due to my lack of patience or at a halftime of a ballgame I am watching. So the camera stays home and is exchanged for the 25' retractable leash for Stella. This morning with the rain there must have been a lot of new scent to check out.

Stella has been running a lot more lately. I have not been adding any kind of meds or supplements, just kibble 2x per day. Like I said yesterday she wrestled with Sadie for the first time in 10 months based on the photo file I have as reference. When they took off around the first turn leaving me behind, I was sure deer must be in the area ... but it was something else.

Another thing they did this morning for the first time in many months was sprint to their favorite 'right hand corner'. This is a known lounging area for the deer as they walk out of the gully but the hounds had not been there in at least two months, maybe longer. What I have to watch for now, is the newly developed ATV trail that goes down into the gully.

Luckily they stayed in the area as I picked up my pace to catch them to block any chance of them running away. When they find something interesting they fall into an instant state of unconsciousness and don't hear a word I say.

With the late morning weather of cool, wet and humid I had a pretty good idea that my job as a 'slacker' would be in full force today ... at least until 1pm when the first of four MLB playoff games are on tv, squeezed around the Bears/Vikings NFL game Monday night. For a sports addict like me, this time of year I don't have enough time to sleep nor enough tv's to catch all 15-16 sports channels showing football, baseball or hockey.

Strange how that ATV trail happened a few days after I told the neighbor 8th grader that deer follow the edge of the field but come up out of that gully. I am pretty sure he has some small hidden field cameras mounted down there. When talking to him weeks ago he told me his cameras picked up Sadie and Stella the time they went out of bounds into the north woods.

I am still 'fine tuning' the blog. Google was kind enough to give me 'bhounds3' as a new gmail account. So that is the blog contact email address now and the contact page has been updated. The 6 yr old gmail account 'houndsnrvs' was hacked sometime last year. I still used it until I deleted this blog a few weeks ago. Apple mail was moving over 100 spam emails per day into the junk folder under that 'houndsnrvs' account. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the spammers to find this address because this is the only site it is and will be used.

As you can tell it's been a dismal growing season for hay the 2nd half of the summer. The weeds, grass, flowers are so short I doubt they cut and bale the file again this year like they normally do. When they picked up their 8 rolls of hay a few weeks ago, the shoved the one that had busted wrapping into the wooded area.

Exploring was definitely the theme of the morning ... deer scat supplements were not on the agenda of the hounds this morning ... it was noses to the ground to process and identify who or what had been in 'their' field last night.

If you look back at posts in February and March you can tell from the photos of Stella just how much she has changed ... for the good.

As usual, just because I am headed home reminding them verbally I am wanting breakfast ... they let me know they will decide how fast we finish this walk. Everything is on their schedule ... I'm just along for the ride.

Stella would still love for me to just leave her outside. She did disappear one time when we were not blogging. It took almost an hour after our walk ended before I saw her walk up the two steps to the door.  I have no clue where she runs off to but I am thinking new territory ... the woods behind my neighbors house to the left of me viewing from the field.

Lately with all the late ballgames on tv finishing in the 1am-2am local time, mornings are starting later thus their breakfast is later. It makes no difference to them. Even with a late breakfast they howl to get lunch at the normal time, less than two hours later. Heidi joins the howling by barking.

She is alive and well but always sleeping when the camera is taking photos. She squeezed in one photo after her lunch break ... back to the couch ... baseball is on tv.

With the floods last May the farmer plowed the flooded area after it was dry enough to plant corn a second time. Thus when they picked it a few weeks ago, that back uncut area was still too green ... so the majority of his field still needs to be harvested.

When I hear the farm equipment slow down on the highway to make the right turn into the field, I have enough time to close all my windows if they are open and put the car cover on the Z4 if it is off. Luckily this time the wind was not strong nor blowing my direction.

Last week sometime I raked a small area of the yard and burned a few small piles of leaves. Later that afternoon as we stepped outside for our 3rd walk of the day the smell of smoke filled the air. I thought my neighbors may be doing what I had done that morning around noon. The longer we walked the more I realized that "Houston ... we have a problem" ... a fire was out of control in the north woods. That is never a good sign with the field so dry.

The local fire department showed up behind a neighbors house to put the fire out ... that is now 3 neighbors in the last 11 months that has had a fire get out of control and the fire department was called. I am one of those 3.

The leaves are trying their best to change color for the month of October fall foliage but a rainy weekend killed their efforts ... so far 9 days into the month it's been a pretty bad performance.

You might think that Sadie chased the butterflies away since that is one of her favorite hobbies ... but it's the change of seasons and dead flowers in the field that has moved the butterflies out of the area.

They were nice while they lasted.

At the end of September I decided my car needed a roadtrip so the I took off to see my old college friend 98 miles away down the freeway. It's amazing how poor a 2-year old freeway (interstate) can be where the highway connects to a bridge. I did not realized on the way down that cheap plastic plugs and screws were working their way loose every rough bridge junction I hit going 75-90 mph.

After arriving at the house I was showing my friend my 'cheap' black plastic grill BMW would put on a car like this. Everything looked fine. As I drove back home with the top down I did not hear anything until I slowed down the exit ramp to a stop sign to make the turn home ... I heard plastic or something dragging the pavement.

I continued the short distance home thinking I could 'nurse' whatever had broke, back to the house where I could see what it was. I was pretty sure it was that stupid cheap ($100) plastic grill. There is one last bridge on the highway about 500' from my driveway. I hit that bridge junction not expecting the loud bang I heard as something plastic caught itself on the connection to the bridge ... most likely made of steel. With that bang being as loud as an explosion my rear view mirror was showing a million black pieces of plastic flying out the back end of my car bouncing down the highway.

Once I take the time around all the baseball games this week, I will fix this well enough to drive it to the body shop a few miles away for them to fix. I don't understand a car that was so expensive when it was new ... why there is so many plastic parts under the car plus the front lower grill. After seeing some old silver paint overspray on the black plastic piece I believe this is a result of a poor repair job that the previous owner paid too much money for.

My burn pile is dying out well and is much smaller than it was in April. By next month when I burn it, the flames will be as high as the picture shows. You can see where I have burnt the tree before. I hate wild ragweed and I will burn that dying ragweed to the left of the pile ... with my water hose turned on and near me just in case the fire decides to go into the field or woods unexpectedly.

The first game is on the tv in the background. The hounds are giving me their 'stare down' for lunch and Heidi will wake up once she hears that kibble hit their metal food bowls. I don't sit on the couch for 4 straight baseball games ... it's on in the background and I watch "situational" baseball ... when something is going on.

Let me know if you have any issues with the new blog, something not working as it should on your tablet, phone or computer. So far everything seems to working okay.

Overcast, muggy with humidity and the ACs are about to be turned on with 12+ hours of MLB Playoffs ahead of me. All is good in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.