Life is pretty rough being a Basset Hound. They have a reputation of being lazy, sleep a lot, shed a lot, a deep bark if they bark at all ... but they have energy and can run fast enough not to be caught if they spy a rabbit. Heidi has a few spots throughout the house where she can take naps during the day or sleep at night. She will get up for breakfast kibble but is back to sleep within minutes ... thus ... no morning walks for her.
It is not Heidi in this poster but it explains pretty well what she has to put up with as a Basset Hound ... LOL
It was one of those days that just felt nice as soon as you woke up. The sounds of birds woke me up soon after 6am. It was a relief not to feel allergies after sleeping with the windows open. I could feel some time was going to be spent away from the computer today and a lot of time outside.
Nothing started of course until the two cups of coffee were consumed. Sadie and Stella didn't mind because they like to catch a quick nap after their breakfast kibble, waking up when it's time for me to put some boots on and start the walk. Stella was showing more energy than normal today.
Sadie bolted out in front of both of us and never looked back. If she had not stopped for investigate some scent I would have never been able to move in front of her for this picture. By the time I hit the first turn I had killed 10 mosquitoes on my arms and legs.
The only plans for this morning was to walk, have my normal breakfast of two eggs fried in butter and water my new plants. I didn't take a photo of it because I wanted to see if it would open up later in the afternoon ... but I caught the Purple de Oro Daylily trying it's hardest to open a bloom in front of the living room windows.
While Sadie headed east to check out the path of deer scent.
Stella headed north across the middle of the field searching for new 'natural protein' that she likes to add to her diet. I am NOT tempted but I wonder what that deer scat taste like to her or is she eating only as a way to identify what animal has been in her field?
As Sadie and I was about to make the final turn home, Stella shocked me by trotting fairly fast behind us to catch up. That did not mean she would walk beside us, it just meant she was in our general area and was aware we were heading home.
She will always do her 'own thing' on her own time. There is no such thing as rushing Stella to do anything.
While Sadie might lag behind at times, she will always catch up without being called.
It felt so nice not to feel the sticky humidity this morning. The grass is not tall enough to cut yet and that may not need it until next week. I am going to wait and see how the recently plants react to living a clay. The hole I put them is was all top soil surrounding their root ball but this whole area is nothing but hard clay dirt ... they should be okay, plants have grown there before.
I have gone back to taking pictures with no lens filter and just a lens hood. If I decide to add a filter it will be a UV one that polarizes. I just found the Circular Polarizing filter too hard to work with for pictures I was taking on the move. Sometimes to catch the hounds in pictures I don't have time to fine tune filter for a better shot.
For those readers that didn't notice, I added some early evening photos to the post on Monday night. I took the camera with me while picking up mail and took some of the house from the street level. Of course Sadie had to inspect everything ... Heidi only went to the front corner to pee but that was all.
With the Yews gone, she had not gone out into the front yard at all.
Not much took place this afternoon. I did one thing different than usual, I never looked at the temperatures today ... I just wanted to enjoy the weather. I did some weed eating until the battery for the weed eater died. It was about time to go back inside anyway.
We headed our for our afternoon walk a little after 4pm and had a surprise ... Heidi decided she would stroll the field on her own.
I usually let her go her own pace once she reached the field. She does a lot of exploring with her nose and rarely decides to stay with us. She is more into investigative work than getting aerobics in.
Her nose is actually pretty strong for finding rabbits, just as Basset Hounds are bred to do. Today though she was just enjoying being not only outside but out in the field.
I was also going to let Sadie and Stella do whatever they wanted. They had slept inside the AC rooms most of the afternoon. The day was pretty casual. I moved back from my 2048 game back to Mahjong. After a two month vacation from playing any Mahjong I was getting a lot of games finished under 3 minutes and 30 seconds today.
Before I had the problems with my 7 year old iMac in May and forgot that I was erasing my Mahjong history when moving everything to a new computer ... most of the 160 games were finished in less than 3 minutes and only a hand full between 3-4 minutes. So I have had to start over. It's good hand and eye coordination for someone retired. At least that is my excuse for spending so much time playing it.
I'm getting to the point I need to go grocery shopping. I am out of coffee so that is one important reason to make the trip. I'll go later tonight after the highway crew has put all their equipment away for the day and traffic is back to the normal 2-way.
They spent a month or more backing up traffic on a major highway for almost a mile, withe a flagperson letting traffic proceed one lane at a time. They were digging up the road and refilling their 3' side ditch with new asphalt. I have no idea of they were fixing water problems or installing high tech sensors ... could be since they were doing this about every 10'.
I was happy to see them finally finish that work and traffic was back to normal during daytime hours. It wasn't two days later on Thursday that I am sitting in traffic again for 10 minutes down to one lane .... the idiots had taken out all of the asphalt for 15 miles, both lanes and reapplying new asphalt ... OVER THE WORK THEY DID FOR 45 DAYS !!!!!
So after I sat in traffic both ways last week I decided any trips to the store or heading west, I would only do after 8pm to make sure their work day was over. The few people I asked locally had no idea what they were doing and way they decided to go back and rebuild 15 miles of highway.
I was told to water the Azaleas every other day but the Daylily's didn't need that much water, lite watering was required. I did the watering this morning after our hound walk. While it's easy to get into the crawlspace, I need to go under the house and look at things. I like knowing whats going one and use to do that at least once per year but I've missed a couple recently.
When I saw Heidi way behind us and was moving toward the woods ... I figured we would catch her on the way back.
They didn't stay together long. Sadie sprinted to the rolls of hay while Stella hung out around that first corner.
I don't even want to think about what Sadie is eating .... I just turn away and kept walking.
At the same time Stella was walking up the path toward me. She was taking the short cut or was trying to tell me she was hot and wanted to go inside.
With Sadie pretty far in back of me, I was able to get another couple pictures of butterflies this afternoon. If she is around she will run after them.
On the horizon I could see that Heidi had slowly made it back to the yard.
It didn't take long after I put the weed eater back into the shed that Stella showed up, walking slowly up the path to the yard ... with not a care in her world ... just cruizin.
Another night of Reds baseball and ice tea ... plus a little reading.
Another fine day in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.
