Stella - VWs - Landscaping

I hope to get Stella into the vet on Monday when I call. She is now limping with every step she takes, even on her front legs. Some think she has arthritis. Feeling her stomach I fear she also has a tumor. I have been giving her this supplement for years for her hips. I could see a major difference when I started but now wonder if it makes any difference at all. Her smiles are normal, she wags her tail, her appetite is normal and water intake. One day in the backyard grass she even tried trotting a short distance. One of the vets at the new place I plan on taking all of my dogs, specializes in older dogs with these types of issues and treating with alternative methods. I don't want her to spend the rest of her life living on prednisone. 

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.

Stella Disappears

I was going to blog about Stella's disappearance on the public blog up until the time I downloaded the pictures into my iMac. I did not blog about her disappearance before, when she did this exact same thing last spring. I had to ask myself why blog about it? Am I just wanting to generate blog traffic? Am I wanting to see what kind of response I get or the comments it receives? Why am I blogging every day publicly anyway? So ... I came here to document the disappearance.


I am going back to commenting BEFORE the photos instead of after them. It makes more sense and is also easier today when I list photos without comments. Our walk this morning started out like all of the, except this one was around 9am. That's fine as we have been starting our walks later in the day this past week.

I wasn't going to take the camera this morning but I am glad I did after what happened. For some strange reason I thought about notifying Kelly and have her put the new blog on their blog sidebar. Since my story of blog stalkers and threats are not true, it would not matter if the blog was listed. Of course, Chinle might see it and then would be able to keep track of what the hounds and I do.

Since I am undecided about the future of public blogging, I'll not ask Kelly to add the Wordpress blog to the list. Afterall I have used 15% of my 3Gb of free photos before I would either have to make version 2.0 of the blog or pay a monthly fee for expanded photo storage just for a blog.

I am two days away from my Facebook account being permanently deleted. That means if I were to log back into my Facebook account AFTER August 28th, I'd have no history, no friends, no photos. I would have to go back and block all the people I don't want finding me nor have a desire to see their accounts. I do miss Facebook "just a little" ... the photos for the FJ Group were fantastic but mostly off road mods and rock climbers. I do miss seeing what a few of my friends are doing. But really they were just "Facebook Friends" that never really kept in touch with me in real life ... except for a couple.

Twitter gives me all the sports news and photos I need. Most of those people have duplicate info on their Facebook accounts. I never heard back from Stephanie concerning Stella.

I knew at this point of the walk that I would be letting Stella do whatever she wanted. Most of the time she is up near the first corner when I leave her behind and then she will wander over toward Haslers or behind Lueking's backyard.

It was this picture that I thought about later when I didn't see her anywhere in the field as got closer to home. Had she gone into the woods? That is the only place she could have gone because she was nowhere in the field outside of her normal places.

Sadie will always look back to see where Stella is.

The sunshine is out an hour later but from this photo you would think today was going to be overcast and cloudy.

Sadie took off looking for Stella as we came to the first corner. Stella was nowhere in sight along the horizon. I looked from the woods on the left, across the field and to the right toward Haslers.

Stella was gone ... I suspected she was in the woods to the left, where I last saw her with her nose to the ground.

In 20 years of living here I have only walked in this woods a few times, probably less than 5 times. It's always wet and muddy down below as I found out that time I was looking for Bertha. But today the ground was dry and it was really nice back in here. I should go back and explore more.

No signs of Stella anywhere. I called her name over and over, hoping to see her come running through the woods ... but did not see her anywhere.

I can see why Lueking's son and grandchildren were walking through this woods last December ... it's nice and easy to move through.

Just think ... this woods rebuilds itself naturally. For all the fallen, rotted trees on the ground, there are new ones growing, with tree trunks only 3" to 6" in diameter.

I was actually shocked I did not see Stella in these woods.

A final check of the field. Sadie and I walked over to the edge of Hasler's drainage ditch ... no sign of Stella. Luckily I did not see her laying by the side of the highway, although traffic is really lite for a Saturday morning.

Sadie was looking through the yard, ran to the carport door and then the front yard looking for Stella ... I left her inside and then drove the FJ back to the turkey farm behind us. Stella was nowhere in view.

I was gone for 8 minutes looking for her in the FJ. It had been 38 minutes since we started the walk. As I pulled into the driveway there was Stella in the carport, walking out to the front to meet me. She was happy I was home. She did her normal 'poking' me with her nose, smelled my hair and then tried opening the round door handle as Sadie and Heidi barked from the inside.

I'll not blog about this. But it's good to document it here. I hope I can find the "label" from the last time she did this so I can keep all of her disappearances together.

For not doing a lot except watering my flowers on occasion, they are looking pretty good. It will take 2-3, maybe 4 years before these plants grow enough to look good. I don't miss the large yews.

The hounds are sound to sleep. I've had my coffee but need some oatmeal for breakfast. Plus I need to start cooking a large pot of beans for later today and the next few days. My problem is, once they are finished cooking, they taste so good I cannot stop eating them. They don't last longer than 2 days.

I'm glad Stella's back. She acted happy that I came home.

The Hounds Take Their 1st Walk Ever In Rain

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.