Stella Out Smarts The Rain

It was not a surprise to hear it raining as we started the day with the normal routine. It was "oh dark thirty" and Stella didn't step off the carport floor while Heidi snuck out under the overhang for her early morning trip. I poured the kibble into their dishes during that time like I do every morning. It wasn't a hard rain today but a steady rain.

Obviously the downspout is blocked by leaves ?... it was a clean gutter just a few weeks ago when I checked and leaves are not even on the trees yet. A bird nest ??? I'll be able to reach over the edge while standing on a 3-step stool and pull out whatever is blocking the downspout.

Stella in the meantime had to do some thinking this morning. She could hear rain drops and she could smell rain so she did her normal secondary way of bypassing the rain ... walk along the side of the house, a left turn immediately outside the door ... slide between the shed and car ... thinking that will keep her from getting wet.

She had come up with a plan though after a few minutes of analyzing. She HAD to pee but she hates getting wet and she never does that inside the house or on the concrete floor. Well trained as a puppy, 4 owners ago.

Some way she figured out it was not really raining but the sound was coming from the overflowing gutter with the blocked downspout. She knew there was a way around it.

She needed to curl around the edge of the house, missing that dripping water.

She was successful, staying on the dry river rock and coming back as soon as she was finished.

You will never fool Heidi though. She knows what is going on outside and it's not within her threshold for activity. She will get up when it's time for lunch and not a minute sooner.

I am going to buy two or three more of these but with a different planting strategy since two of them has died due to lack of water the past two winters. This one is in front of the carport and for some reason gets enough water from the rain, although it is still under the roof overhang.

I will move the walking stones back towards the house on the dry side of the mulch, where you can barely see the dead Azaleas. Then plant the new Azaleas where those stones are so they can capture the water when it rains.


My wandering around realtor dot com continues. Some places have been eliminated while a few new spots have been added to my search. Yes, I have questioned myself on whether it is out of boredom, rainy weather and a real desire this time. There is an area that I always goes back to year after year when I look.

Since Bloomington Indiana is rated as a top retirement city, less than 100,000 population until you add in the 42,000 or so undergraduate students at IU, it has been added as a possibility. It has great medical facilities, public transportation, top restaurants with any kind of food imaginable along with sports in the Big Ten Conference ... I have looked around and bookmarked some areas.

If you were to drive over the causeway on Hwy 446 crossing Lake Monroe you would think you are in the Pacific Northwest near Whidbey Island. A lot of lakes in the area if that is your thing. Why would I make the 25 miles move? That's the million dollar question that has no answer at this time.  :)

For some reason I have lost my urge to read books. Not sure where it went but it's no longer there. I returned the books to the library and I did not finish reading any of them. I really think I am in a funk of some kind until my sunny warm weather returns and I can get back outside doing something. Doing the dishes and laundry don't seem to excite me too much, although the dishes are done.

That's about it this morning. I am headed back to realtor dot com see if I can find somewhere new I can research. (Where did the spell check icon go on WordPress today?)

Nonstop rain today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Lack Of Interest & Little Action

There has been a little lull in the action around here. The rain will not show up until later this afternoon. I have everything done that needs to be done outside, and the inside domestic stuff. I have no urge to drive anywhere, buy anything nor finish reading the books I checked out a few weeks ago. The only interest I have not lost is looking at houses on realtor's website. I did that last night until 1:10am.

A blog vacation might happen here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Thinking While Working On Monday

Sunday afternoon Heidi went to the door to be let outside. It was a great day, much warmer and the sunshine never disappeared. She spent over an hour outside on her own while I checked on her from time to time just to make sure she was still in the yard. She has never wandered off during her time alone outside. Yesterday she found the bank on the south side of the yard to be her resting point.

About the time I walked outside a few hours later she was just about to the carport, heading toward the door.

Looks like I have grass to mow today after it dries, sometime this afternoon. I knew it would be tall after two or three days of rain. I've been cutting it taller this spring, 3".

Stella could feel it was much warmer Monday morning. She had a few stops to start her walk. She needed to think about her plan and also eat some nice green tall wet grass as she stepped into the field.

t was a little over 60°, perfect weather. By the time I do laps back and forth across the lawn later this afternoon it was supposed to be in the 70's. I had a lot to do today and with the improved weather all of those things were finished by the time I put the mower back in the shed.

During my search yesterday of warm weather locations I asked my old friend that has lived in Phoenix the past 20 years and loves it and the heat, about some of the surrounding smaller town on the outskirts of the city. The map showed nothing around those towns but I also know how fast that area is growing. After all I am not the only person that wants to migrate to warm weather.

I thought his answer was perfect.

"If neighbors are your thing and you want "community" then it a good time to get into something there.  It's cheap and it's growing at a disgusting rate.  If you don't want to be around people, the place you buy today with no neighbors in site might just be overrun next year with families, cars, kids, and stupid barking chihuahuas. Houses are made with the lowest priced materials that can be used to mass produce houses as quickly as possible.  AND they are track homes, yuck!"

I sat outside in the sunshine enjoying the day when that email showed up on my Apple Watch. I can always trust that he will give me an honest answer about anything I ask. Always has and always will.

I looked through some locations that were suggested by a few readers either in the comment section on the blog or by email. A lot of nice places but I admit, nothing really gets my blood moving until I am looking at places out west. When it comes to southern California I've had to ask myself is it the year round weather I want or am I wanting those great memories back from when I lived there before?

Why am I willing to buy something smaller and overpriced just to live in heavy traffic and jammed packed neighborhoods?

To widen my search I even increased the maximum I'd buy a house for. Of course that brings up a wide range of new possibilities. Some of them even showed some good possibilities for the hounds but after a morning walk like this morning this field is hard to beat. The obsession had slowed to just curiosity by my first cup of coffee this morning.

I knew I would think and process the information I gathered just like many times before. I was able to eliminate a couple of places and both of those were places I had lived in the past. I kept remembering the key factor of this quest was to move to warm 12 month weather.

Stella decided Monday morning had some of the best tasting, freshest deer scat in a while. I let her enjoy her delicacy before walking over to her and telling her to "come on." She would move before I had to grab her collar.

On her typical stroll and her pace. She has her own world that spins on her time, it adjusts to her not the other way around. I am slowly getting back to the same way of doing things. Not paying attention to any news, tv or online, is a great start to that change.

I had time all day to think about the places and houses I had looked at over the weekend. It made the yard mowing seem shorter. I made the different tasks I did today much easier since I was distracted.

On a side note, in the past two days I have never seen the ticks as bad as they have been since I moved here in 1998. They are all on me and I have yet to find even one on either hound. I check them each time they come back inside and figured if I am finding as many as I am on me, they have to have some somewhere. Luckily I feel them crawling and can get them off of me before they try to dig into me.

The deer traffic scent was so strong Monday morning that Stella went past her normal point where she makes the last turn with me to head home. I let her go to see what she would do or how far she would go.

She finally decided it was time to get back home. That is a worn deer path you see in front of her moving in a north/south direction.

As you can tell, the grass is a little higher than 3". It was finally dry enough to mow by 2pm and I had enough grass everywhere to mow the whole yard for the first time this year. Today will be spraying the weeds on the driveway. A few years ago in August I spent four straight days on my hands and knees pulling every weed out by hand ... only to have them grow back 3x as thick.

After Sunday afternoon's walk, Stella did finish by walking down the center of the yard, nowhere near the house. So this might just be a 'morning' routine for her and not dependent on what kind of weather it is.

With great weather Monday I found out we are outside more even if that is nothing more than the hounds sleeping in the sun and me soaking up some rays contemplating life. With that in mind I also found there are not enough hours in a day when the weather is great and was one of the reasons I did not blog yesterday. No, I wrote the blog post and added the photos but failed to post it later Monday night.

I just finished comparing "Taxes for Retirees" in the five states I am now interested in. I have a couple of states that are not western states that have peaked my interest and both have good weather year round. Plus in both states you can buy a lot more house for the dollar compared to Arizona and New Mexico. One state I am familiar with and the other recommended by a blog follower is quite a surprise.

So with that in mind I will be checking out those two states in more detail sometime today. The website that Barney gave me in a comment the other day has worked out really well and I like it better than the one I had been using in the past. Their information took a few of the towns off my list.

Well Stella is doing her normal morning stretching right before she hydrates herself, which means our Tuesday morning walk is just minutes away from starting.

Another day of great weather here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.