I Found Out What Rain Was

I made a comment Saturday night over on Al's blog, The Bayfield Bunch, "rain??? rain??? what's that?" ... well starting about 12:30am local time last night I found out really quick what rain was, plus loud thunder, bright lightning and high winds. Even Stella stood up from sleeping to check to see if everything was okay.

I was glad to see it happen. All the storms forecasted in previous weeks were all north of us. My front yard was getting brown plus I knew it would cool those temperatures we had lived with the past week or two. It looks like one project will be moved up on my 'to do' list. Dig up the old drainage system I installed years ago and re-install something new since this is consistently having standing water after heavy rains.

I could feel the rain lightly falling on me as I tried to get some pictures after the storms this morning. Sadie didn't believe me when I told her it was still raining and we could not go for the morning walk yet. She had to find out for herself and once she did, she moved to the carport under cover, while I risked getting wet taking photos.

My pictures this morning are a mix from my Nikon D3200 and my iPhone 6s, see if you can tell the difference.

I slept through all of the storms that continued throughout the night. Based on the tweets from my local Utility Company this morning, power is out in a lot of places except mine. There are reports of a lot of trees that were blown down. Luckily I didn't hear any of those scary "cracking" noises you hear before a tree falls. Yet the storms cleared out some of the dead limbs on my Mahogany trees in back.

At this point in time as Sadie and I walked around the backyard checking for any damages, she still thought there might be an outside chance for a walk this morning. Wunderground and Intellicast are showing the rain should stop around 1pm ... I'll put on my boots made for hiking in wet fields and we will take off on a walk after their lunchtime kibble.

Since in the past I have always had my potted flowers destroyed by high winds and thunderstorms, I put my two pots of Geraniums and Elfins inside the carport away from the blowing rain that would take place later on, just as I predicted. Maybe I should apply for one of those tv weatherperson positions since I seem to be more accurate.

No damage this morning from the blowing rain last night. I think I see in that top picture a little improvement from the way the flowers looked when I potted them yesterday afternoon.

As I stepped outside into the light rain to check on the Azaleas that I had sitting in possible locations, two out of four of them had blown over. It was good I moved the flowers into the carport when I did last night before the storms started.

See those steps that are never used except by a lost stranger every year or so? I plan to keep those open with a stone walkway leading to them. I am trying to decide whether to put the walkway in front or in back of the Azaleas. I'm thinking in front of them will be the best and I'll move the Azalea a little closer to the house. I have decided to move that one in the picture over to just right of the small kitchen window. New positions are pictured below.

After more reading on the internet this morning about Azaleas plus what Ethan told me at the landscaping biz ... their root system will be very shallow, only a foot deep. They will grow as large as I let them. Since I bought the "hot shots", they will bloom into my favorite color ... or one of my favorite colors ... red.

So I started looking at the front of my bare house again and came up with a different idea about placement this morning. I moved the Azaleas to where I think will be their final resting place. The forth one you can barely see is right in front of the Directv dish bracket, which will grow enough to hide that bracket.

One reason I don't like Sycamore trees ... even after cleaning out my gutters of their bark just last week, my front gutter plugged up again last night by their bark and possible tree branches ... you can see where the rain ran over the gutter and moved the mulch around.

While Stella scratched, Sadie stood listening to me mumble plant ideas out loud to myself as I took photos. I have two Yellow Daylilies and I have been told not only do they have a deep root system but you can't get rid of them once you plant them. They keep coming back.

So I came up for an idea about them.

I will plant one to the left of the porch in the corner. I'll keep it cut back so it does not take over the porch and maybe just a little above the bottom of my low living room window.

The other one I am going to plant in front of the pole that holds my HughesGen5 satellite dish for my internet. I'll let it grow somewhat out of control where it will add some bright yellow to the corner of the house and hopefully grow tall enough to hide most of the pole the dish sits on.

With deep root system it can enjoy going as deep as it wants and wrap around the 3' feet of concrete the dish installer used when setting the pole in the ground.

Or I could trade the yellow Daylily by the porch with the Azalea that is on the south corner of the house ... that way both yellow flowers would be 'bookends' with the reds between them.

In between these 6 different plants I'll fill in with Hostas and other annuals. At the same time I'll continue to learn more about this landscaping stuff and add things as I get ideas. Feel free to comment or send me emails on my idea or any new ideas on your own. I have almost ruled out any kind of bushes or shrubs.

For those readers that receive my blog by email, I apologize for all the spelling errors I did not catch. I've corrected them after seeing what was sent out automatically.

It's 20° cooler this morning here in the wet 'tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Photos Experiment Continues

Since I only used my iPhone camera yesterday and didn't download anything from my Nikon camera, this picture of the Friday night rain did not show up until my download this morning. While surrounding towns had severe thunderstorms and wind, we had only heavy rain for only 15 minutes.

I didn't post any photos last night after our afternoon walk because using the 'zoom' feature on the iPhone 6s camera did not work out well.

I had fallen behind transferring photos from my computer to Google Photos and Flickr. I use both for online backups with a ton of free storage available. So I spent a little time doing that Saturday afternoon but also once they were uploaded I looked through them. In both programs the photos looked great whether they were from my Nikon D3200 or the iPhone 6s camera. Flickr still has better quality because it does not compress any photos that are uploaded.

These next 3 photos are from the iPhone yesterday afternoon and edited.

I wanted to continue my test for blog photos so I changed the settings from 'photo' to 'square'. I still needed to crop all of them to center each hound. I clicked the enhance icon on a few of them. I realize that each camera can do different things and each has it's own features to like ... so I have two really good cameras.

About the time that Sadie, Stella and I were going to head back inside after their late lunch break, I couldn't find Heidi in back or the carport. She had moved out to her favorite sunning spot in the front yard.

I am thinking of trimming the top third off the Yews to make them shorter. I know that I don't want them to get any higher than what they are now.

I found it to be very easy to zoom taking iPhone photos. All I needed to do was spread my two finger on the screen. It would be simpler if the sunshine did not block out what you were trying to see.

Sunday morning ....



By the time I had coffee, some internet and blog reading this morning, Sadie and Stella were more than ready for our first walk of the day. With the high humidity early this morning Heidi was in mid-afternoon form and had passed out on the couch with the AC running at maximum output.

With my running shoes getting soaked yesterday when it was after 12 noon, I decided to go back to my waterproof hiking boots for this morning's walk.

As I was saying earlier, using the zoom feature on my iPhone 6s last night did not work out well. I zoomed in the hounds where they had filled my screen before taking the picture. Every one of them turned out too blurry and distorted. Even those photos I took with 50% zoom turned out the same way. They were so bad that I did not even keep them in my photo library on the computer.

This morning I moved back to the Nikon D3200 for this morning's walk. I cleaned the lens, the mirrors inside with a camera cleaning kit just in case there was some dust affecting the quality of my recent photos. I cannot tell that the cleaning made any difference ... although I like these photos better than those taken with the phone.

Stella likes to change her walk routine about every 2-3 weeks. Today for some strange reason she never went left to the middle of the field but stayed on the path I walk and was the 'leader of the pack' for a lot of it. The theme of the day was 'adding protein' more than 'identifying scent'.

They were both around the corner and out of sight before I could raise my camera. Stella was doing a fast trot but not quite the same run that Sadie was doing.

Believe it or not, this is Stella out in front of Sadie and I ... she is usually way behind us.

Stella again ... Sadie is back near me before she took off sprinting to see what Stella had found.

With this much intensity I would expect to see something fresh but as you will see a couple of pictures lower that is not the case. The ground is basically dry under her nose.

Even with me standing above her saying "let's go" ... she doesn't move and in fact she resisted as I tugged at her collar.

As the hounds took off toward the far right corner of the field they had found some more additional protein. This area is heavily traveled by deer as it is just outside their entry down into the gully.

I looked at and even touched this area their noses were at and it was nothing more they dead dry grass near the dirt.

I took this same picture yesterday with the iPhone camera and wanted to do it this morning for comparison. Only today I did some editing and took out the power lines that were in the left corner of the photo. I prefer to keep pictures as original as possible but I did like not seeing the power lines in this picture.

Stella was more active in the field this morning than I had seen her in a while. A few times just after taking a picture of her in the distance by the time I turned to look for Sadie, Stella had ran up right behind me.

This is also a deer path along the back of the field that goes around the large power tower and heads north into the woods or into the field to the right.

Once we make that final turn home Stella always slows her pace, if that is even possible, and slowly strolls home. The last time I left her out there to go at her own pace and to go where she wanted ... she didn't show up at the house to be let in for 35 minutes after Sadie and I were inside.

Her newest routine, about 4 days old, is veering on the return path through the middle of the field and toward the pole that shows the north property line. As I walk the normal path that moves away from her, she heads toward the yard.

Today would be the type of day to move a chair or tie up a hammock in this shaded area and enjoy the day. I could move a chair and my ice tea but my hammock was lost or left in one of my moves decades earlier.

I have a busy sports day today on tv. This will keep me inside and out of the hot humid temps. I like this weather but I still don't want to spend all day outside in it.

After the hounds are fed lunch once they wake up ... they have all overslept their normal lunch time ... I'll get another walk in before the Formula 1 race is on at 2pm. Yes it was ran live this morning but I'm never in the mood to watch racing at 7am.

That race will lead me into the Reds game at 4pm while the DVR will turn on at 5pm to tape the IndyRacingLeague race from Iowa. I'll watch that later tonight.

On a recommendation from Tom I bought a circular polarize filter yesterday for my Tamron lens. With my Best Buy certificates and award points I had forgot about I had a huge 75% discount on the cost. I am anxious to try it out and see the differences. I'll let you know when I start using it. It's due to arrive on Wednesday, maybe sooner.

For something different I'll leave you with our morning picture of the cornfield across the highway in what my Apple Photos editing program calls "mono".

I think I can squeeze in a lunch before the hounds wake up. It even feels like a Sunday today so I can confirm my internal clock has been calibrated.

Perfect weather today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.