A Spring Day Today

Six days ago this truck delivered something in the field across the highway. If I remember correctly I guess either ground up corn cobs or something that I cannot remember. Well every day since then, my curiosity kept increasing. It got to the point today that I had to walk over and check it out. With the temps around 50°, the hounds and I spent some time outside enjoying the great weather.

You might be able to tell that with all the rain this past week, the pile of 'something' got whiter. Hmmmm, can't be corn cobs. I had no idea what it was, nor have I figured out what the purpose is.

It wasn't warm yet when Stella and I took off this morning but it felt warm. No wind, and the sounds of birds filled the air.

The loud sound of cows, something we rarely hear, confused Stella as she turned to look at me for some answers. They were all the way across the gully and the property behind that.

Again the loud sound of the cows stopped Stella in her tracks. They would be to the far right of the picture, a good distance away, up behind what I call the 'far right corner of the field'.

With good weather in the forecast I wanted to pull my ladder out and clean the gutter where the downspout is attached. On the front gutter I wanted to take that downspout apart because last week when it was raining extremely hard, the water was coming from over the edge of the gutter and out every seam of the downspout. I was in for a huge surprise.

I have a guard that slides down into the downspout to keep the leaves from going down into the downspout on both front and back gutters. The back one had a few wet leaves blocking it so that was not a surprise. What was a huge surprise was not only the front downspout was clear but the whole gutter on front of the house was spotless ... clean. I took the small sections of the downspout apart thinking I'd be pulling wet leaves out of them but they were clear also.

I thought Heidi would spend some time in the backyard since it was such a nice day but as I was putting the ladder away, she was wanting to go back inside. She had no interest in staying outside. Stella on the other hand find it to be the perfect time to wade through the corner of the field that is full of burrs ...

When you see the picture of the field across the highway taken from my house, it looks pretty small. but as you see once you are behind the trees the field goes almost a quarter of a mile, even veering to the right past that row of trees on the right.

Any ideas????

Egg shells.

The field to the left of the one that is always flooded. I've seen water go over the road just past those trees and telephone poles. Below you can see the trash it left when the water receded.

I did a post on that old steel bridge you see, in 2017. You can see more photos of the bridge here. This post also had more pictures of the steel bridge plus the local area since the hounds and I took a drive in May 2016. For that post, click here.

It wasn't long after coming back inside that the hounds took up their normal afternoon positions on the couch and they were back to sleeping a beautiful day away. I just read that huge storms are passing through the central plains tomorrow with extremely high winds. We will get the end of that on Thursday with only 20mph winds and thunderstorms, at least it will be 64° if the forecast is correct.

I added a new link to my sidebar this morning. Very informative and information they don't tell you on the news. His article today will scramble your brain cells but it is the same information I read from the FBI site years ago, as far as the plan of the Muslim Brotherhood. His article today has updated information. Is anyone paying attention to this movement or will they just let them take the country 10-15 years from now?

Well the weather is great so Stella and I will go for an afternoon walk once she wakes up in a few hours. In the meantime my load of laundry is finished in the dryer and it's time to fold them. Baseball starts in 16 days ... it's great to be a sports junkie.

A cool 52° today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Snow & Warm Weather Same Day

If you had been outside with the hounds and I just after 12 noon yesterday, you would have found it unbelievable what we saw an hour before sundown. With the temps near 50° it was good to see the 5-day forecast was right on track for warmer temps by Thursday and the thoughts of Spring could be right around the corner.

With the warm weather, we fit in 3 different hound walks yesterday with the last two without the camera and Stella on the 25' retractable leash. I could feel the warmth of the sun but as we walked further the wind that was blowing was extremely cold ... what was happening?

Sitting on the couch later, watching tv and catching up on all the millions of dollars spent on NFL free agent players yesterday, I glanced out the window and saw blizzard like snow, blowing sideways and coming down hard. It was just 50° a few hours ago !!! Those big flakes were sticking to the ground also ... strange stuff.

So this morning the hounds and I finally started the walk a little later than normal after realizing it wasn't going to get any warmer than it was, 24°. As you see there is snow barely covering the yard and field. Yet the bright sunshine made all the difference in the world on the walk.

These recent freezing temps have led me back to Realtor dot com, looking at houses in Southern Arizona instead of New Mexico. I don't want to be cold anytime of year ... is that possible anymore?  I had been looking at houses out west hard starting around January 20th. I even called a realtor "out there" and had a local agent stop by my house to take a look. I had a few favorites 'saved' but in the past two weeks two of my top three have sold.

So this morning over a couple of cups of coffee I took another look at the small towns I had looked at before. An even trade for what I would get for my house (not much) is not possible out west even in very small towns, without buying a 'fixer upper'. Those results have been the same for the past 8 years where I have looked at housing off and on.

Some say I am crazy wanting to sell a house I own and move to a different house in a different location that would come with some kind of mortgage. Other people remind me that it would be worth the mortgage payment in exchange of better weather. One tells me as long as I can afford a mortgage then there is nothing wrong having a mortgage after you have retired.

Although it wasn't the houses that was interesting this morning though ... something had already been walking down our path leaving prints of some kind barely visible. I kept trying to see if they were deer hoofs or something else. It looked more like a dog paw in size but nothing was distinct enough to tell me what it was.

The seemed too close apart for deer tracks.

Sadie and Stella were behind me and the prints on the path. Evidently the freezing weather created a lot of deer traffic earlier this morning before dawn.

As usual I was letting Stella do her own thing but was a little concerned that soon after I took the picture of her, I glanced back in her direction and she was out of sight. She has done that before but seems to show up within 30 minutes after Sadie and I finish our walk or while Sadie and I are finishing our walk. I was hoping she would show up today before we got back to the house.

The snow brings out the paths the deer take down into the gully. During the summer those paths will be evident by mashed down brush.

The idea of moving has always been a hard one for me to figure out. I've been here 20 years, moving in about this same time in March. It was much warmer the day we moved in and the week after seemed like summer based on the photos I glanced through the other day. With the inability to make a decision, I take that as ... I should stay here until I know something more definite.

But when that Apple iPhone weather app shows me at 24° and a few western towns I have listed in the 60's and 70's it seems like a pretty easy decision.

Walking back I thought I saw some kind of movement up ahead but it's always hard to tell because I don't wear my glasses on the walks. I was happy to see Stella heading across the field to the other woods ... I was pretty sure she was tracking those same prints I had seen veer from the path in that direction.

Luckily with little wind ... it was just cold but not freezing.

The photo doesn't show it but Stella is moving at a fast pace with her head down and heading toward the woods behind the neighbors house. I thought I'd yell her name and see what she would do.

She was faster than my camera shutter as she stopped and looked right at me, then turned around and started walking toward our path. These photos are taken at 200mm zoom so we are still pretty far apart.

Once on the path she strolled toward me to nudge my knee with her nose letting me know she was ready to head home. I wonder what her new routine will be a few weeks from now?

I can't explain my sudden urge to blog two days in a row. I have no idea if it will continue, we will see.

A reader told me this morning by commenting on yesterday's post, that he could read my blog but could not see my blog images on his computer, tablet or phone. Anyone else have trouble like that? For him, every image has that triangle with an error symbol. I have no idea why the blog shows up like that so I'll do some google searching and see what I come up with.

If any of you know why that happens, leave a comment so we can see if he or I can fix it.

Maybe I am hesitant to sell my house because I would have to keep it 'immaculate' for showing prospective buyers instead of the 'lived in' look?

Tom .... I've decided on this post to leave the images in the smaller size that Google Blogger compresses them and see if that makes a difference to you.

Bright and sunny there in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... just a little cold is all.

DST Does Not Bother The Hounds

With everything in our lives computerized, there were no clocks to manually move forward one hour last night when turning off the lights around 2am.

The hounds were all sleeping in their normal spots and they didn't wake up any later this morning. Actually based on the 'old' time, we started the day about an hour earlier than we had the past weeks. It was going to be really cold this morning and the hounds found that out was they walked on the 'frozen tundra'. It didn't feel later with the DST time change.

It was the normal routine before starting the morning walk, coffee coffee and more coffee. This gives you some idea that it's in the 20's. The t-shirt and cargo shorts were switched back to wool socks, jeans and the down jacket for the morning walk. At least this morning the down jacket, ski cap and ski gloves were used. Freezing temps are still better than the snow that was predicted.

Stella joined Sadie this morning and without much coaxing, she made the whole walk with us, a pleasant surprise.

Does it look like 22° ?

Stella was already into her Sunday stroll pace. Nothing to get excited about today. She will be fed the same time for lunch with DTS not changing that at all. In fact they might finally get their way and eat earlier than 11am (old time). They will determine their lunch time by howling and/or barking.

Sadie had been following the edge of the field non-stop, even past the first turn. Maybe the freezing temps make those scents that much stronger. Or, there were just more of them this morning.

Stella was about to lag behind but right after I took this picture she looked up and trotted in our direction. Maybe it's the colder temps that motivates her enough not to lag behind or follow her own schedule.

They were excited to get to the far right corner of the field, it's the entry way to the 'deer highway' that reaches downhill into the deep gully. I could almost imagine a group of deer walking through there at daybreak.

Stella is right on the entry ramp of the deer freeway.

Surprise surprise as she continued to follow Sadie and I.

Even from a distance I could hear Sadie making that sound that bloodhounds have when they are really inhaling a scent. Years ago someone that walked Bertha everyday when I had to leave them in a kennel while I was on a business trip, told me she had never heard a sound like that from any other dog.

I heard that sound as I snapped this picture. It's the sound of her jowls flapping as she sniffs deeply into the ground. It is a continuous flapping sound with each inhale.

You can tell here that once again she is pretty keen on tracking. She probably lives for these two walks per day so she can get a nose workout.

Stella had stood and looked over at the cornfield. She was almost positive that deer had ran through here into the field. Just to the right of her is where I have seen a line of deer follow each other, jumping over the older wire fence that has been mashed down. Once they hit that cornfield they talk off running and hopping high into the air, faster than any bloodhound chasing them.

I did not have to say "let's go" this morning. By this part of the walk the hounds were gladly heading back to a warm house while my finger tips inside my ski gloves were numb from the cold.

Nearing the house I kept hearing a loud bird conversation. I saw two birds sitting at the top of the Mahogany tree in the backyard. They either heard the hounds or my camera beeping when the focus locked in because as I pressed the shutter, they flew away. The camera caught just one of them.

They flew higher and circled back to the edge of the driveway and landed high on the tall sycamore tree. Guess where those hard little round buds land?

I can only assume after the million of times I had pushed buttons on my Directv remote over the years while watching college football, college basketball, NFL games and MLB games ... it was bound to happen. Last night only some of the buttons on the remote were responding. I was only a phone call away of having Directv sending me a new replacement, free of charge.

Since some of the buttons were still working by changing channels and turning the DVR and TV off and on, I thought there was a chance I could salvage this remote and get it to work again. With 'March Madness' only a couple of days away this is no time to have to wait for a new replacement remote to show up in the mail.

I went into the drawer that is full of all the owners manuals I have for different things. Everything from the Bunn Coffee Maker to that PIA Echo non-starting weed eater. This time I needed to find the Directv Remote manual because I was going to reprogram it. I pulled out the two stacks of manuals that fill the draw to the maximum amount without blocking the drawer.

Not only did I find that manual but the results were even better than I ever expected !!!

A month or so ago I wrote on this blog about a possible 'senior moment' when the owners manual for my Nikon D3200 had strangely disappeared. I was 99.9% sure I had put that manual in this drawer with the others. Multiple times I looked at every manual one by one ... not finding the owners manual for the camera. My memory cells were turning to soap as I mentally retraced my steps trying to remember where I left that manual for my camera.

I had a downloaded .pdf file copy but it always seemed easier to read through the manual in my hands with the camera sitting nearby instead of having to read a manual on the computer.

So, as I am looking for the remote owners manual I see this page. It was one I had looked at 3-5 times before during the prior searches for the camera manual. The "Approved Memory Cards" caught my eyes. I couldn't believe it!!! Could it be???

I slowly closed the book back to the outside cover and there was my answer. The Nikon D3200 User's Manual had been there the whole time. I had not lost my mind (that's debatable) and the manual was exactly where I had put it months ago ... in the drawer.

I know that may seem like a small issue but when you finally find something that was missing, turning your memory cells into soup as you try to remember where you put something, it was a great feeling.

There was a 20° increase today temps in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana and that put the hounds back into the 40's which is pretty nice this time of year.