A Little Update After 3+ Months

As you will see things have been pretty normal around here. Nothing really to report on but I heard you and thought I should post a few photos of the hounds and the dog, plus a couple of extras. It was a wet April to say the least so the hounds spent a lot of time inside sleeping just waiting for the yard to dry out enough where they could run, lay in the grass with their bones. About that time the yard would dry out, it would rain again.

Sadie Still Cannot Find The Black Cat

As the hay gets almost shoulder high at the edge of the yard, other places in the field it is not as high as my knees. With this comes pollen and that is a huge problem for me. There are times even the allergy tablets are not good enough, at least the ones I buy off the counter. Maybe I need to start taking some of that 12 hour stuff. Anyway, all of us survived the holiday weekend.

The highlight of the weekend was early Sunday morning while sitting at the computer, when I heard a familiar sound of a helo. It sounded as if it was landing right outside my window in the field. I knew there was not enough room at the landscaping business for it to land nor behind the trees, but the familiar sound was extremely loud. That could only mean it was hovering about the power lines and other towers that are behind the trees and run through the gully.

I wasn't quick enough to get outside to take a better picture, so this was zoomed through a window screen and did not turn out as clear as I had hoped. It would have been gone if I had gone outside. It was hovering right above that tower for a few minutes, hidden by the tree limbs.

As it turned out, we had not started the morning walk yet. I am not sure how the hounds would have reacted to something that loud and strange. Had I known the helo would be more exciting than the Indy500 I was going to watch later, I am not sure I would have tuned in. All I'll say is about the race ... I'm liked who won, there were too many yellow flags, it took too much time to watch, too many commercials again and a spectacular crash that without modern safety technology the driver would not have survived that crash in the past let alone 'walk away' from his crashed car as he did.

With it hotter than usual, more gnats and mosquitos, and the additional treat of plugged sinuses ... the walks for me were not that enjoyable. Sadie of course loved them and demanded 3 per day. Stella is stuck in the gear for low energy but managed to make it through them at her pace.

Monday was so quiet inside and outside you could hear a pin drop. Very little to no traffic on a major US Highway. The heat, although not really that staggering hot, zapped the hounds where they spent most of their day sleeping inside. Heidi had not moved so long in her stretched out position on the couch I had to look close one time to see if she was still breathing. She slept for hours in one position.

I use to put this view of the field across the highway as my 'starter' picture for the blog everyday. I included it this morning because I found the different shades of green to be interesting, along with the freshly planted field behind it. You can see the reason why they replanted part of the field in the post before this one.

You have the taller grass along the highway that will eventually be mowed by the state highway department if not the local field owner. That turns into the deep green of the corn growing, somewhere around a month old, then the dried out light brown of the dirt they cleared on Saturday which was all under water a few weeks ago.

As the wild ragweed surrounds and covers my burn pile for next fall, I decide to mow back to that pole some say is my property line. 70 some years ago my driveway continued down that direction as a one lane brick road where they could bring their farm equipment to work the field behind my house. From what I was told that equipment was a team of mules and a row of plow blades. There are a lot of fallen trees back in that woods.

Even though this Tuesday felt like a Monday when we got up, it was the same routine I have written about before. When Sadie wasn't at the door looking to come inside as I poured my first cup of coffee, I decided I needed to go outside and see if I could find her. I didn't see anything that was tanish/red walking through the taller field.

Then right at the end of my search, I saw her tail moving in the tall hay.

I don't know if she was tracking the black cat's path backwards but once she arrived in the yard she had locked on the scent. It was confirmed in the middle of the night fairly close in this vicinity, the black cat is what Sadie smells. I didn't get up to see it last night in the early morning hours, but I heard one of the biggest cat fights in the middle of the night and loud enough it seemed to be right outside the window.

At least the cats keep the mice away. Sadie only goes on this search in this area the first thing in the morning. Other times we are outside, the only time she had gone in this area is if I walk over there. With the shade, it's the best part of the yard.

She finally decided that was all the time she had for the search. It was time for her short nap until our morning walk ... all have been quite wet lately and I've had to wear my snow boots to keep my feet dry.

With the cooler temps forecasted, it would be a good day to high pressure wash the fence, the house and carport. It will be interesting to see if I can produce enough motivation to get that finished today. Yesterday I got everything I wanted to do finished, so I have a clean house, a clean kitchen and two loads of laundry done.

Apples free app that came with my iPhone called "Reminders" does it's job well. All of those 'to do's' I am behind on show up in red print along with the number of them waiting for me to complete. they show up on all of my Apple devices so there is no way to escape.

I didn't wash the Mini last week because I thought it was going to rain on Sunday but I cannot use that excuse anymore. That might be the trigger to get me moving in the direction of the high pressure wash machine.

I have lived her a long time, almost 20 years, and it is amazing how a lot of things change while many stay the same. The weather is always changing yet the land and trees stay the same. This photo was taken October 2014 in one of the most colorful falls we have had in a while.

Sadie is telling me it's time for our first walk of the day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Only Two Hound Walks Today

With my iPhone weather app showing me a temperature of "feels like" 87° early in the afternoon, the hounds and I decided we would come back and try to start our day again at 3:30pm. There was no sense in trying to fight that kind of heat for our mid-day hound walk especially that close to lunch. (bloat in bloodhounds).

Even then when we went outside Sadie was showing me that it was still hot three hours later so we might have to wait a couple of hours for those temps to get a little lower. I knew when she didn't beg for a walk and headed back to the door, that it was our first hot day of the year.

Heidi showed her speed and agility by sprinting from the center of the yard to the driveway and then slowly walk up the drive toward the house. She went inside to continue her sleeping marathon for the rest of the afternoon.

It's very rare to see Stella ever wag her tail on a walk, especially when she is with Sadie and their noses are to the ground. Not sure what it was but both were highly interested and their tail movement told me they were about to lock in on their target. I was pretty sure I could not catch them if they took off following what they had found.

Luckily Sadie decided she didn't think it was that important and peeled off to continue their walk. Stella had other plans though. I am sure she thought if I thought she was tracking that I would leave her alone and then slowly veer in the direction of the neighbor's woods ... a place she has not visited in quite a while due to adult supervision.

With the gnats and mosquitos locking into my sweating wrist and lower arms I was more than happy to increase my past telling the hounds to 'come on, let's go' ... Sadie followed me ... umm Stella is on her own schedule.

As I zoomed my camera lens to see if she was going to come faster or not ... I didn't say a word and just turned around and headed home. Those mosquitos had called out their friends with their silent secret code and I was being eaten alive.

As I sped my walk, I turned to do a final check on Stella to see her trotting faster toward Sadie and I. She must have realized that we were serious about getting back to the house. Sadie had even moved way out in front of me, not because of the mosquitos but because she was too hot.

I could tell when Sadie turned around she was also out of patience waiting for her friend. She checked herself to see if Stella was ever going to catch up with us.

Eventually Stella cruised on into the yard but she was in no hurry while Sadie was standing at the door wanting inside.

Although the sunshine has disappeared Wunderground shows rain in Indianapolis tomorrow down to a 50% chance from the 75+% it was showing yesterday. Since those cars travel 2.5 miles in 40 seconds or a football field within a second, they don't need a lot of time to get the race in tomorrow. I think I see a small window in the graph where they can fit it in between 11am-2pm.

A friend suggested to go wild on my computer and plug my other 27" monitor with the non-retina screen into my new iMac and use that as a 2nd screen. Only out of curiosity, I am going to try that and see how that would look with two monitors again like I had for the last 7 years. It does come in handy at times when working on spreadsheets, plus the Activity Monitor is always in view.

Gretchen - 1975

After returning to college after my 2 year enlistment in the Marines, I heard about a 'dog rescue' in town and thought I'd check it out. As I walked into the old house, that was clean and organized all the different dogs were blocked off from the living room where my interview took place with the man that ran it. YOU did not chose your dog, THEY decided what dog was perfect for you after hearing about where you lived, what your daily schedule was and how many hours you would be with your dog.

She was a cross between a basset hound and german shepherd - believe it or not one of the local frat houses had the male version of the same cross breed.

If the hounds are not walking today ... they are sleeping. The hot muggy weather arrived today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Smooth Blog Merger

The merging of the two blogs went pretty smoothly until I made a major mistake and didn't back up my old blog. It was simple to transfer the newer blog posts and comments, by exporting them and importing that file into the old blog. It even sorted them by date without changing any formats of the older blog. I chose the option of posting the new blog posts automatically.

The mistake was made when I didn't back up my old blog, then tried something different for the blogs I follow on the left side. I thought I would have 'traveling bloggers' and a separate section for 'retirement bloggers' that I had moved from my new blog. It looked ok but I decided to even merge them into one section because it would be hard to see both sections due to the amount of blogs I have added.

With a quick glance I thought I had the correct section that I wanted to delete but I didn't see that the newest section 'retirement bloggers' was at the top when I added the gadget. So without a blog backup, I deleted all of the blogs I have been following for 2+ years, of people RVing. It took a while but with the help of other blogs I follow and using their blog lists I remembered most of them I think. Other's I found by typing their blog names and having my browser memory bring them up automatically.

I think this is a good move getting back to one blog. It will be easier for the readers, myself and will follow what I said I was going to do last month ... blogging about the three subjects in the title. Which you will notice I did a slight change to the blog title.

One post that you may not have seen on my other blog, will show why I have had a hard time trying to decide over the years to move, sell out, stay part of the year, etc. This blog post and photos will give you a good idea what at times I have a hard time deciding what to do.

You can read about it here: Some things that keep me here.

I will say I have not looked at any RV sites recently nor Craig's List for something to buy ... but I have thought about traveling off and on. With only 2 hands available and the DNA of the hound breed, I still feel it would be too hard to travel with 3 hounds.

Tonight on the daily walk was a good example as 3 deer hopped out of the woods that border the field we walk through, totally unexpected, while Sadie and Heidi came close of pulling both leashes out of my hands as they were taking off to catch the deer. Even when I held them, I could almost feel the retractable leash break with the strength that Sadie was pulling. The leash held up but it was a struggle to keep 2 of the hounds from breaking away. Winston in the mean time was walking his slow pace and with eye allergies I don't believe he saw the deer.

Still, some short trips will be made locally with the hounds.