As the hounds went outside first thing in the morning while I poured their breakfast kibble, I could tell the weather experts were correct today ... it had rained over night. There was just a little standing water in the flowerbed (normal spot) where I am going to have a large rock dropped soon. Wunderground was showing rain 75% and down to 50% chances solid until Friday morning ... finally after a couple of hours I decided why not? Sadie and Stella would take their first walk ever in the rain.
I had a choice to either walk in the light rain getting my shirt and my arms soaked or wear a rain jacket and still get my shirt and arms soaked since was very humid ... like 99% humid. I chose the rain jacket and zipped up to the bottom of my chin ... that kept those mosquitoes that were buzzing by my ears and nose away from their target ... my arms.
I can barely call it a light rain ... you could hear it, but not feel it. It wasn't a real rain by any means but it was outside our box, outside the norm. I lowered my mower yesterday and used a tape measure to confirm the blade would cut at 2". A little shorter than normal (1 notch adj) but recommended for my lawn by Scotts lawn care.
You will notice just left of the flowers the ground gravitates toward the house. That 'ditch' was not there when the area was overgrown with wild brush, small saplings and extremely thick to even try to walk in. I am going to have to fill that in with dirt and replant grass. Any ideas how to prevent the water from naturally taking that path towards the house?
By the time Sadie and I were in the field and I could hear rain drops hitting my rain jacket sleeve, I glanced back towards the house and Stella was still sitting under cover in the carport looking right back at me. Smart Bloodhound. Did that mean she wasn't going to walk?
Finally she slooooowly walked to the corner of the house, hesitated until I said "come on" and then slooooowly walked into the field. Sadie and I were already following the edge of the field heading our normal start north.
Once she decided the rain wasn't that bad, she had a little trot to her step and trotted right past me to catch up with Sadie.
Of course Sadie was oblivious to any weather change. I doubt that she even knew it was raining let along feeling it. The only thing important to her was WALK ... and that was what she was doing. I don't recall her being this obsessed with taking walks when she was younger ... she will always come to let me know she wants to walk, no matter where I am or what I am doing.
Where I barely found a small yellow daisy yesterday and took a picture of that, this morning there were more of them and much larger. Amazing what a little all-night rain will do for plants.
Stella's new routine this week is stopping right at the corner with Sadie but instead of walking toward the neighbor's woods or out in the middle of the field, she has started walking in the direction of our return path and joining Sadie and I with the walk 3/4 finished.
I could have included the other 4 photos that show the sequence of her walk, but they all looked the same as this one, just in a different location. I've never had a hound bloodhound or basset, that walks as slow as she can and does most of the time.
In the meantime, Sadie was right along with me. You could tell that she was happy to be walking and she thought it was a good decision that I decided that a little rain never hurt anyone.
Stella sees Sadie and I but that doesn't change her pace. She is doing a slow loop toward us, probably to check if I am really paying attention to what she is doing and if she can sneak away for some possible 'natural protein supplement' that she likes to find.
You can see she has almost reached our worn path that's hard to see ... just to the right of her nose.
From this point on, both hounds wander in all directions while I continue to walk and turn to take pictures. They gradually herd themselves back in my direction the closer we get to home.
You can tell by my ballcap it was a very light rain. Since I have officially named my North Face snow boots my all-wet, rain and snow boots, I can see us taking more walks just like today and not cancelling them just because there is some rain outside. The rain jacket also worked out well, even in humid weather.
Before letting the hounds back inside I went in to get 'their' towels so I could dry off their underbellies, legs and paws. Stella decided once she was inside that I needed to do a better job of drying her legs and paws off ... I took photos of her doing that but she was licking them so fast that both photos were blurred.
I would like to keep the windows open today with the temps staying in the low 70's. Yet with the humidity showing 99% and my new addiction to cold air inside, I've closed all the windows and turned on the AC ... feels much better away from the sticky humidity.
I found out this morning that a huge data user is when I upload photos to Google Photos and Flickr. I try to do that only during the time where HughesNet gives me free 50Gb of data between 2am-8am. Lately I have not been using that free data for saving every photo taken that day to those two platforms. I know it's probably overkill since my computer is backed up automatically with Apple's Time Machine to an external disc but I like having my photos backed-up on an online site just in case I have disaster here.
So far this morning after uploading photos to this blog and posting it, plus my normal internet reading I have used only 134Mb. Yesterday I had used 200Mb of data in the first 1-1/2 hours.
As you can tell from the picture of the cornfield, it's going to be a day of rain and gloomy weather but a nice break from those high 80's and low 90's. I've pulled another book off my shelf and today feels like a reading day.
Nice and quiet this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.