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.

Sadie & Stella Very Active This Morning

I made the mistake of leaving a window open plus a few windows had the screen windows down instead of the storm windows closed. That mistake did not fail to remind me just how cold it was last night. The living room thermometer was showing 58° ... big mistake.

So I guess we will be pushing those warmer temps out one more day before they start. It was still too nice to not take a walk with the hounds. With it below 70° Heidi stayed in bed, hidden under my Marmot sleeping bag. Sadie grabbed my left hand with her mouth and led me through the yard to the field, while Stella stopped to have some morning grass.

You can see how fast the grass is growing. It is not that tall all over the field but just in areas the hounds dumped their tanks over the winter months. I saw how cold it was when I stepped outside for the first trip of the day so this time I put on the Mountain Hear Wear down parka, my ski cap and a light pair of gloves for our morning walk.

A few steps into the field Sadie released my left hand and took off sprinting in every direction possible. She was unconscious as she turned on a dime and moved in different directions back and forth across the field. Was it the cat or deer ?

I turned to check on Stella and I was happy again to see her running. It wasn't important that she was running to meet me. It was important to see for the second day in a row that she was running after taking some time off. I was almost to the point of taking her to the vet for a blood test to see if she was sick, due to her lack of running. She loves to run.

By the time I clipped off a few pictures of Stella, I turned to continue to walk and saw that Sadie was already close to the first turn. She was still going crazy with tracking scents, moving in short bursts of speed in different directions back and forth from left to right.

By the way Sadie was action I thought it might be possible for a deer chase this morning. That was fine with me, I would have let them sprint as far as they wanted or until they wore out but I would only walk to catch up with them. I found out there were no deer to chase, only their scent to track.

Stella ran past my leg at full speed toward Sadie. Then immediately ran into the bushes where you could see the deer had mashed some of them down to ground level. Stella was in deer heaven for a while.

Once again, when I turned to continue the walk, Sadie had taken off for the far right corner and Stella was following at full speed. A first for her in what seems to be in months. I still have not looked back through the blog or her pictures just to see how long it's been since she has sprinted somewhere.

At this point I had to yell Sadie's name. She was on the move and was headed down into the gully. It would be nothing but deer scent, thick bushes and deep mud at the bottom. They can both go to the very edge of the gully but not down into it.

She turned immediately when she heard her name and took off down the back edge of the field. Stella and I could not keep up with her today. When her tail is curled and her nose is to the ground she is really locked into something and pays attention to nothing else while she is on the move.

Stella decide she was finished trying to keep up with Sadie and went back to her own pace.

The field grass seems to be growing by the hour. There are a lot of new tall sprouts of hay coming up. It always seems if they do that second cut in the fall, there are less weeds in the following spring with a lot more hay to cut in June.

While Stella and I walked at our normal pace, Sadie continued to search and explore a long way in front of us. Her nose was to the ground all the way to the backyard.

I let Stella hang back where she was in the field while I approached the house. She came running to catch up and had to check out what Sadie had found so close to the house.

By this time and the area that they would not leave, I was pretty sure that big blonde cat we saw a few weeks ago by the neighbor's woods had paid us a visit while we slept. She also might be a great mouse hunter because it has been so long since I have seen a mouse inside the house, that I can't remember the last time.

It's on the chilly side but it's a beautiful day today. We will get in another hound walk later, maybe even two more. I'm motivated enough to get some domestic things done around the house today and might head to the Chinese Buffet downtown for dinner tonight. Not only does it taste good, it's all you can eat for $8.

I don't know if you noticed or not but I edited my pictures different on yesterday's second post. I was going to say something about it but forgot until it was too late to mention. Instead of clicking the "enhance' icon in the Apple Photos program for each picture, I only clicked the "auto" under Sharpness. That kept the lighting and color as the lens captured the picture but tweaked the pictures just a little for a sharper view.

With today's pictures I did a little of both and some not at all. Sometimes the "enhance" will make the hounds too dark or the grass too bright green.

I called Exede customer service yesterday to verify what I was having done next Tuesday was okay for a current customer. The local biz that installed the dish in June 2014 will be changing out the modem and adding updated equipment onto the dish ... for faster download speeds.

Exede customer service told me I was getting a deal that new customer get, everything was fine and it was correct to call them next Tuesday after the changes are made to cancel my old account number. I forgot to mention yesterday, in addition of a $16 per month savings and more data per month, that on the 3rd month of billing they will give me a $50 credit. That will make my bill only $17 after taxes in July for 20Gb of date per month.

For those of you that live in rural areas or even in towns that have only DSL internet service ... I can tell you living up here on the hill I get high winds and severe storms at times ... my satellite internet has been more reliable than any DSL service I had before. It's very rare that I lose the satellite signal. My download speeds are between 12Mbps - 15Mbps.

That is all from 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.