The Hounds Are Loving This Weather

It was hot enough yesterday afternoon that I could feel the burn on the back of my neck as we did an afternoon walk. With Heidi still sleeping on the couch enjoying a breeze coming through the north living room window ... Sadie, Stella and I decided to enjoy the late afternoon sunshine.

As Stella walked slowly on the path I thought she was going to take another walk, but she stopped, turned to look at me, then slowly sat down and laid down for an afternoon nap in the middle of the field!!!

This lasted about 15 minutes before the sun beating down on her with enough heat that she woke up to move. She makes me laugh on a daily basis from something she does or did.

She sat up to think about her next move.

Sadie decided the heat was too much, for the first time this spring or year. She walked over to me so she could sit in the shade from the roof overhang.

Stella did not walk too far before she realized that Sadie might have the right idea of getting out of the sunshine. She headed back to the house.

I was surprised that Sadie was actually laying in the yard. As I have said in the past, she rarely sits or lays in the yard but is always moving around smelling different scents. She has always had a hard time sitting still when she is outside.

While sitting in the shade with the hounds, enjoying a glass of freshly brewed ice tea, I heard a large truck slowing down and it sounded as if it was coming down the country road instead of the highway.

From his load, it looks like they are dismantling the old steel bridge a few miles behind my house, not the one across the highway. With "rush hour" traffic on the highway I wondered how long he would sit there waiting to pull out onto the highway. It turned out to be less than a minute.

While I was taking pictures of the truck from my chair, Stella found her favorite spot in the backyard to take another short nap. She always has the same routine where she will lay there in deep thought, then flop over on the ground.

She loves sleeping in the sunshine.

Maybe you can tell the last time I cut my yard I raised the mower blade up one notch which puts the grass cut at 2.5" - 3" tall. I think for the summer and overall health of my type of lawn, cutting it taller is better.

Sadie did not move during both of Stella's naps. There was a little breeze whipping around the house from the southwest. She sniffed the air, looked around but never got up until we went inside.

Finally Stella had enough of the hot temps and was ready to go back inside. I thought it was the perfect time to put the top down on the Z4 and head out for a 6pm drive. I had a new route I wanted to try. The nice thing was in the middle of the drive at a T intersection I changed my plans and turned left.

This put me a nice two lane highway with a lot of curves and hills through the country side. It ended up being about an hour loop back to the house.

One thing I have noticed since I cleaned my camera yesterday afternoon, that the pictures have regained their color. They look like the same quality I had a year ago and better than in the past few months.

I am still using the lens hood, but it might just be the lighting or the time of day. After looking at the pictures below from our Wednesday morning walk I am not sure lighting is the reason. None of the pictures in this post have been edited.

We started out on the walk a little later this morning. We woke up early but for some reason we are experiencing a little slower schedule today. I have a weird idea why Stella has been trotting a little more than normal plus keeping up on the walk on her own and never having to call her.

I have not been bringing the 6' standard leash with me, carried in my pocket in case it was needed. Before I would let her sniff the leash before putting it in my pocket. Could that be the reason she is back to walking the full distance without me having to call her? Recently she had spent a lot of time walking on the path as if she was on a leash.

Sadie stayed near me more than roaming this morning so I didn't get a lot of pictures of her today.

I didn't say a word and kept walking as Stella stayed behind us. It was nice to see her running as I turned to check on her. I hope to see her doing more of this from now on.

There was not a lot of intensity on this walk compared to yesterday morning. As always they each stop in the same places each morning. Stella eats grass in the same spot and they both follow the deer path.

Stella thought she had made a breakaway heading to the far right corner without me seeing her. She made the mistake of glancing over at me when I yelled "over here" and once again she turned and headed toward Sadie and I. I just started using those two words in the last week or two and she has always responded to it.

She never looks happy when she doesn't get to walk in the direction she was heading.

While Sadie walked to the left of me, never veering off the path, Stella followed her own pace behind us but by the time the walk ended she had caught up with Sadie.

Not much planned for today. After the effort clearing the bank last week I have seemed to have lost all of my motivation in attacking my 'to do' list. By the time I take a couple of walks, shoot around 100 pictures and check them for edits, write a blog post and spend some time outside just hanging out with the hounds ... the day is over.

Time seems to be flying faster with the warm spring weather.

I did go through all of the pictures I took yesterday of some vacant closed businesses in town and the steel bridge across the highway. Counting the pictures of the hounds I took 157 pictures yesterday.

When I was at the landscaping business yesterday looking at some things, Ted told me all of that yellow in the field was "wild mustard flowers". He also showed me some stump killer that I am going to paint on all of the saplings I cut last week. He thinks this solution will keep them from growing. I'll then cover the ground of the entire bank with some seed, along with the wild ragweed that grows every year.

I need to look in the attic and in my house crawlspace but still dread doing it. Maybe I'll get under there later this afternoon. I need to back the Z4 out so I can open the ceiling in the carport, letting the built in ladder drop so I can get up in the attic to have a look around.

If I do nothing else today ... I will wash the Z4 this afternoon.

The hounds are loving the weather right now in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Lens Hood Makes A Difference

My picture experiment today was using the lens hood that came with the Tamron 18mm-200mm lens. I saw a difference just after a couple of photos, that would be the same type taken every day at the same time of morning.


After the hounds have their breakfast, Sadie, Stella and I go outside for them to dump their tanks and while my coffee is being made. I only take 3-5 pictures during this time. The small picture I use to post here of the field across the highway, then a shot in back as I stand at the corner of the house and some of the hounds if there is something to take.

All of these pictures posted were not edited in any way and all were shot using the lens hood. I think that with this specific lens, the hood is needed at all times because the colors were being flushed out from the additional light.

Granted we are moving from winter to spring. Things are getting greener by the day if not by the hour. Pictures taken in the winter months in the Midwest are dull and drab in color.  Yet during those months the color of the hounds did not stand out unless I enhanced their color when I edited the pictures.

Stella decided it was going to be one of those days where walking was not her main priority, nor was tracking deer scent. After she moved from the spot above, this is what I found in the picture below. There was nothing there but the wet leaves from where she had been licking.

Sadie was on her own schedule and was always pretty far ahead of us, even after she would backtrack and wait on Stella and I.

I believe whoever or whatever was chewing the tree limb decided enough is enough and moved on to some other delicacy.

I was trying to decide while I waited on Stella if I should just walk on with Sadie and let her do whatever she wanted but I did not want to go get her near the end of the walk. Most likely she would have ended up by the neighbor's wooded area.

While Sadie was showing more energy than normal ...

Stella was walking and moving in an extra slow gear. I could almost hear her dragging her paws on the ground as she slowly walked along the edge of the field.

By the time I took this next picture, Sadie had already been up to the far right corner to check out the 'deer highway', then circled back to get Stella and I. That did not matter to Stella, she was on her own pace today and wasn't going to change.

Neither hound had any urges to take off out of bounds and as I turned the corner to head home they spent the majority of time walking right next to me with Stella right behind me, out of camera range. I had to stop and wait for them to get this far in front of me.

I believe you can tell just how slow she is walking. Each step is slow and once again she was falling behind Sadie. Based on the starter growth of the field and lack of weeds growing, it looks like their first cut of hay will be one of their best quality in June.

With temperatures headed to the 70's we were going to make a couple of more walks, fix the three screens that Stella destroyed last summer and do as much outside as possible.

I was off to a good start, with the 2nd hound walk complete right after their lunch, I went to work on repairing the small screen windows with new screen on two bedroom windows and one spare.

This is the new grass I planted a few weeks ago, really about a month ago. It survived freezing temps a few days after I planted seed the first time. I spread some more seed, then the heavy rains came. So I spread the last seed I had in the bag I bought in early March. It is filling in the bank quite well and looks to be right on schedule. It will look good next spring in 2018.

All the photos taken this afternoon were with the lens hood on, no editing.

I found out last summer the hard way that Stella was the escape artist they claimed she was. I made the mistake thinking there was no way she could crawl through a window that was only 16" tall and 39" off the floor.

She did.

By the time I returned from my Z4 drive with the top down, she was sitting next to the FJ, panting, ready for me to let her back inside for some water and a nap.

Before

After

If I don't have any more memory lapses when I get ready to leave the house, and make sure the windows are closed, then these new screens should last another 15 years like the others did. I guess there is one advantage of repairing them ... they will not have be cleaned with the high pressure washer in a few weeks.

I was at a good pace, getting things finished, and checking a few things off of my long 'to do' list, until I stopped at 2pm to eat some lunch. During the time eating a salad, a small carton of Chinese food, I remembered the final round of The Masters was on tv today. I usually watch the last 4-5 holes.

Around that was the Long Beach Grand Prix Indy Car race, 85 laps on a different tv channel. With some slight stiffness in my lower back from doing something as simple as repairing the screen windows I thought it might be the perfect time to cancel the rest of the list for the day and my rules in retirement. That rule is not to do more than one 'major' thing per day. LOL No schedules and no rush.

In the meantime we headed out for our 3rd hound walk of the day but cut it off short. Neither hound seemed too enthused and it ended halfway to to the first corner when Stella sat down looked at me and didn't move. So all three of us turned around and headed home. They both were sound to sleep within minutes after walking inside.

After looking at these pictures I am going to make one adjustment in the camera settings and set the light setting to -1. That will brighten them up just a little and other than that I think I have found part of the problem and it was the light that washed out the colors while using the lens without the hood. I never used the lens hood with the Nikon lens but need to with the Tamron lens.

You can take a look if you want at my photos on Flickr. This link will show about 1,000 photos I've made available for public viewing. I have all my photos in Flickr as a backup. The reason I bring this up, I think you will see a real difference in the picture quality when they are not compressed by Blogger. Also my Wordpress blog does not compress the images I load and they are the same pictures I use in this blog. I think you will see a difference.

Thanks for the emails and comments about my picture blog post Saturday night. It's always good to get opinions from blog readers. Check out these photos from today and let me know what you think. Maybe I have solved the picture quality problem by using the lens hood.

The 'to do' list is about to commence here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.