PNW Weather Hit's "The Tropics"

While sitting outside this morning enjoying my first cup of coffee, the weather reminded me of those when I lived on Whidbey Island NW of Seattle. It was mid 40's, light misty rain and signs it had been raining during the night. Besides being in Indiana and not Washington, the other difference was ... zero wind here. Both Heidi and Stella were back to sleep since they finished their breakfast and I wasn't sure at that time if any walks would be taken today. Rain was in the forecast for most of the day.

Stella is starting to show her independence again after a short period of hanging close to me most of the time since September 15th. We had just started the walk where she found something interesting,  that she never moved. I had to backtrack on the path to talk her into walking.

The dead ragweed really looks bad when it's wet and overcast.

She eventually started her walk back toward me. She is also starting to show more tracking than the past few weeks. Again like yesterday morning, I saw a lot of fresh paths where the grass was mashed down sometime last night or early this morning. Those paths were not there yesterday.

Once she decided it was time to get going, I barely caught her running when I turned to see where she was. She trotted right by me and then veered toward the edge of the woods. There is a single narrow path that follows that edge of the woods where deer go in and out of the woods.

By this time that misty air was turning into a very light rain, so light that I would not call it rain but it was more than a heavy mist. That didn't bother Stella, she kept marching on.

If you look close there is one of those paths I talk about that veers right from our path and heads to the 'far right corner' of the field. It's the mashed down grass that is behind her. She stopped when I told her to "come on". It was too wet for me to be walking through the tall grass to go get her. I was glad she turned around.

She trotted back toward the path and never stopped. In fact she never veered off the path that passes the two rolls of hay and runs parallel to the back edge of the field. She went into a slow walk to make the left turn towards home and I am nowhere near that corner.

I would pay any amount of money to know what she hears or what she smells when she stops and looks like this.

While I follow the path ... she continues over on the old ATV path, where Heidi was walking the other day.

You can see this overcast light rain weather is set in for the day. As long as it's not cold I don't mind a day like this on occasion. Looking at the trees in the distance I didn't see much change in the leaves turning color from last Sunday.

I was never close to Stella on the way home. She stayed out front and trotted away from me a couple of times. There is one area she wants to get to before I get there telling her to move and I think that is why she is always trotting in this part of the walk.

I stopped to wipe some rain drops from my camera. It took no more than a minute. When I looked up I didn't see Stella anywhere. How could she disappear so fast???

Zooming the camera lens closer to the neighbor's woods I still don't see any sign of a tan tail, which is hard to see now with the taller straw that is also tan. About the time I was going to get my jeans wet from that tall grass by walking that direction ....

I took a final scan of the field and barely caught Stella to the left of me ....

She finally agreed it was time to get home and jumped back on the path.
 

There was nothing to see, no sounds out of the ordinary but she was very curious about what was happening toward the highway. She might be smelling a scent that is in the field across the highway. This time of year the deer traffic increases, not on the highway LOL but crossing it from my yard to the field or vise versa.

Heidi continues to be more active than she had in months. She comes to get me to let her outside more times during the day. A lot of those times she will do nothing more than find a sunny spot and sit in the front or back yards.

This morning she decided the two fleece blankets I washed yesterday, didn't need to be on the couch but on the floor, where she could sleep a little before lunch. It took some time for her to drag them off the couch into the perfect positions on the floor. The clothes dryer collects a lot of dog hair from all the fleece and Mexican blankets, but the hair is hard to remove from the fleeced ones.

With my loss of interest in the NFL games, I'll finish another book today and start a new one. Neither Stella or Heidi was too enthused to do anything outside after lunch. Heidi took a lap around the house and Stella never left the carport.

Not raining but still a little cool. I contemplated whether to take a trip to see an old friend today. At the time I wrote this post I wasn't sure what I was going to do today but felt the urge to do something different. I knew the hounds were going to sleep all afternoon and it looked like the rain had moved on with no more expected the rest of the day.

It looks like I might be raking leaves this week. A little at a time instead of waiting until the end with a major project on my hands. There is always hope that strong winds will blow them out of the yard to make my raking job easier. 

A 'non-eventful' day here in 'the tropics' of  Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Take A Day Off

It was another nice day today, with the morning walk taken in 71° weather and a slight cool breeze from the south. The big difference was, my feet were dry during and after the walk, in a field that had heavy rain-like dew in the shaded areas. How did that happen? I wore my North Face snow boots again, just like last summer. Stella was so excited about walking this morning she was the first one out the door with a big nose to nose race between her and Sadie, on who would be first outside.

With the sun reflection this morning different than yesterday's late afternoon, I had a better view of the mowed yard. I couldn't help but post this photo this morning after admiring the change a sharp blade made yesterday. July brown is the lawn color of many houses here locally. We do not have a water shortage, nor is it expense to use water but I don't see a lot of people that water their lawns like I have in the past. I have not watered my yard in years and doubt that I do this summer.

As Stella stepped into the field ahead of me I was happy I made the choice that I did in footwear. As of this morning there is no need to look for another pair of cheap rain boots that are low cut, not the ones that are knee high. The snow boots will do the job and it's only a 15 minute walk at the most. There is no other time in yard work that I get my feet wet.

Sadie was back in her routine of exploring scent during her walk instead of eating, like yesterday.

Stella was also back in her old routine of ignoring anything verbal and wandering with no specific plan in place. I wish I could be as laidback as she is. It took a lot of verbal herding of her today to finish the morning walk. There were even three separate times I had to backtrack and just the touch of her collar got her to move in our direction. Much like the mother I saw the other day in Walmart with her young child ... but there no collar was involved.

I am sure the gardening and plant experts can name this as soon as they see it. I can't. If a name or a plant is related to sports then I am pretty quick recognizing something. Otherwise my memory sucks on plant names, song names, shopping lists and what I had for breakfast yesterday.

Stella followed her path slowly angling towards Sadie and I. She seemed to be feeling pretty good today as I witnessed a little more energy from her this morning. Of course when you compare her speed this morning against 'slow motion' I guess anyone or any hound would look energized.  LOL

Sadie heard nothing, saw nothing, tasted nothing ... only smells were her focus this morning.

As soon as she gets back inside after these morning walks, she sleeps soundly all the way until lunch is served. Where was Heidi this morning on such a nice day .... stretched out on the couch snoring.

Thanks to a couple of comments yesterday, I left my camera setting at 'auto no flash' and will keep it there. Now my brain is searching the difference in distance .. this was taken at 135mm. I wonder how long these rolls of hay will stay here? Obviously they don't need the hay until this winter, but they usually have it picked up within a month of baling it. Not this year.

As we made the first turn this morning, the air was full of birds singing. No butterflies were seen and that beagle we saw yesterday was nowhere on the horizon ... I kept looking for it just in case.

I've never been able to get rid of those 'elephant skin' patches you see on Stella. Different creams have been tried, all the creams were for canines only.

Unlike yesterday, at this point of the morning walk, I had nothing in my mind for today's plan. When you are retired you really don't need a plan but what it showed me, that brief one day slap in the face motivation had vanished as fast as it appeared yesterday. Unless I want to drive to Bloomington to pick up a new turntable, I didn't get anything done besides watching the Reds game in Chicago this afternoon.

Turntable???? Did I say a turntable??? Yes I did. At 34 years old, with a new belt, that old LP vinyl record was sounding great the other day as it streamed through my brand new Yamaha receiver. Then a strange noise ...  then a screeching noise!!! I knew something major had happened. With my small camping LED flashlight I was able to find the cause. When a stylus is that old, plastic ages and breaks. The stylus needle had broken off from the cartridge.

After spending a few days online searching for a stylus replacement and then a cartridge replacement, I was finding that the replacements suggested of course were priced high, throw in some shipping cost and I was approaching the cost of a new turntable ... that was a MODERN turntable ... they now connect a USB cord to your computer so you an download songs from a vinyl LP into an MP3 file. Pretty amazing.

So yesterday morning, or was it Friday morning ? ... I started going through all of my vinyl records to see how many were duplicated when I bought a CD years ago. I wanted to double check on whether I really needed a turntable or not.  Luckily I did not have to go through the whole collection. Halfway through the first handful of albums, almost every album I looked at was not on cassette tape nor CD ... "case closed" I'll get a new turntable. Those LPs that I did see I wanted to play again. {By late afternoon I had almost decided to not buy a turntable but to take that same money and purchase those albums that were only on vinyl, electronically or on a CD. I may rethink that option whether to spend money on something that may not be used a lot.}

It was about this same spot yesterday that I saw a glimpse of something up ahead by the edge of the field, not knowing if it was a rabbit or a small dog. I double checked this morning to see if the beagle had come back but not really expecting to see it. I had a feeling it was just visiting neighborhood yesterday.

I am not sure how many of you have dogs. Nor do I know if you take your dogs for walks off leash, giving them total freedom, but this is a fine example of a bloodhound being stubborn, just as their AKC description states. It is also shows it was one of three times I had to walk back to 'start' to grab her collar to get her to move in our direction. Some times Stella was start walking our direction once she sees me walking towards her. Sadie is standing right behind me when I took this photo ... also waiting.

I like this view of the field ... it is a good way to show what kind of day to expect ... minus high temperature readings. It won't be long before all those green leaves will be different colors.

Looking at the treeline of the Mahogany trees behind the house as I walked back home, I noticed a section that did not have leaves this year. I wonder why? That is just not one Mahogany tree like my friend thought it was a few years ago but a group of small ones. As I type this I am following that leafless tree limb down toward the bottom of the photo and know it's a single limb a few feet away from the others ... and I remember it was like this last summer also. It looks healthy.

This section is to the north of the front yard on the field side of the property line. I know why these trees look like they do. It was a couple of years ago when I decided to burn all the dead leaves and brush that had collected over many years between the saplings on the north side of the yard. The flames were high enough to shoot up into those trees and was so big that a car passing by on the highway decided they would call the fire department for me. He didn't know that I had things under control. It didn't take long for the local volunteer fire department to put my fire out. Like the bank on the opposite side, the bare ground from burning brought back that same wild growth 3x as thick.

I have said it before but I need a chair up in this area. To me this is the best part of the yard. A good 10° cooler even in the hottest days of summer. That single tree in the center of the photo is the tree that has no leaves. It is not a problem mowing and trimming the grass around it but maybe I should cut it down to ground level.

With the mower raised back up one notch to a 3" cut I will be able to miss a week in my mowing schedule. We are looking at a couple of days it might rain but in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, those forecasts can change within 5 minutes.

The afternoon turned out to be a pretty lazy day. I watched the Reds game until 5:15pm when Sadie couldn't wait any longer for her her afternoon walk. A little too hot for me but we took off anyway as the Reds game looked like it was going into extra innings.

I had planned for some afternoon photos but the hounds had other ideas. While they were outside after lunch I was pouring a new 40lb bag of dog food into the sealed storage container. I grabbed the camera expecting that Heidi might be sunbathing in the front yard while the bloodhounds roamed the field.

How wrong I was ... all three were standing at the door wanting back inside. Within 5 minutes ... all three hounds had chosen their afternoon napping spots and were sound asleep. So with a little free time until the baseball game I installed Firefox Quantum on my laptop, imported all the current bookmarks and did the latest updates to Firefox. Now that I have blocked autoplay for videos, I really like using that browser. It has the security of Safari and the features of Google Chrome.

The suns reflection told me the Z4 needs washed. With the rain no longer in the 5 day forecast I'll wash it in the morning and then do a little weed pulling in front.

It turned out to be a pretty lazy Sunday, not really a surprise after all the work I did outside yesterday. I have a tape of the IndyCar race today in Iowa and the 2nd Stage of the Tour de France to watch tonight.

Otherwise the weather was beautiful again today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Some Weird Rambling

For some reason I felt like writing early Sunday morning even before we took our morning walk and by the time I finish this long post consisting of a lot of weird rambling, questions running through my mind and photo commentary ... I might post it now and not wait until later this afternoon or tonight. A fair warning, there are a lot of photos and a lot of content to read on this post. Some of you may think I have lost my mind and am on the road to insanity.  LOL

Five years ago when I told my deadbeat neighbor, luckily he moved, that the bank was my property and do not burn it, he not only burned my 100' of bank along the driveway but also my four evergreen shrubs I had planted on top of the bank. I had hopes of blocking any view of his house and with those evergreens. After the shrubs did not recover, in June 2013 I cut them at ground level ... notice how much my property has sunk and is sliding down the bank.

This is nothing new, this area of the yard between the burn pile and my driveway, has been sinking for over 50 years based on what my cousin told me. She grew up just a few houses away. The seven acre field behind the house all moves to this part of my yard with a lot of underground water. I may eventually have to have a dump truck load of dirt brought in to level out the yard and rebuild some bank.

What also added to the faster erosion, six or seven years ago the local electric company cut down large trees on that bank that were under their power lines going to my house. They did that for a million miles of power lines, not really million but a large area of the county. Those large trees played a big role in keeping that bank stable and not eroding.

Right after Sadie jumped from the field into the yard she left a path of fine powder coming off those buds on the tall grass. Since my allergies didn't go crazy I was happy to see it wasn't pollen. It did bring out some new ideas for photos on this walk and I cannot remember seeing this before.

I am that the point of trying to decide whether to put all of my rambling at the bottom of this post instead of mixed with the photo commentary. I don't want to possibly confuse you by mixing in my weird thoughts with the photo descriptions or story. Believe me I have a lot to write about and a lot of questions ... maybe I'll do all of the scrambled brain cell stuff at the end of this post.

Stella was going to get her freedom back this morning and she did not hesitate in following the edge of the house before she turned right to walk up the slight incline, then left heading north into the field. I was fine with that but it was not until later I changed my mind ... something told me she might wander further than the neighbor's woods today and I did not want to take the chance of her getting on the highway. Better safe than sorry.

Not 20' into the field and my hiking boots, thin bicycling socks and feet were drenched with water. Where the grass was tall enough, my legs and the bottom third of my shorts were wet ... we had not even started the walk.

Sadie did her normal thing ... while I looked a little harder for our path that is worn in the field with our multiple walks per day. That is just how fast the field is growing. This seems to be one of the best looking grass field I have seen in years, without wild weeds or ragweed trying to grow.

I couldn't see Stella at first glance but saw her soon enough to see she was walking very fast with her head down. That thought of 'highway' didn't leave my mind ... I decided to go over and get her now instead of the end of the walk.

I made an immediate left turn through new territory and tripled the amount of heavy dew. It literally felt like I was walking in a shallow stream and I could see water running down the front of my legs ... my feet were squishing inside my boots with each step. Sadie was confused but turned to follow me toward Stella.

When I called her name, to my surprise she looked up at me and started waking toward us. Then we almost did something entirely different but not only did I not want to confuse the hounds I didn't want to confuse myself by changing a daily paradigm. That would be walking the whole half mile path in the opposite direction.

The reason that almost happened was after Stella caught up to us, I walked over to the alternate return path we take and stared walking on that path toward the middle field. For a minute or two I thought about walking the whole path in the opposite direction ... but why confuse the hounds. They have those two choices to make on our return where the path splits in two different directions towards home.

A short 10' right turn got all of us back on the normal path right before the first turn at the corner of the field.

Again you can see that 'dust' from the buds on top of the grass as Stella walks through the tall grass. I am sure this happens this time of year annually but I sure cannot remember it. Still when took my first sip of coffee I was confused thinking it was Monday morning but the highway had very little to no traffic at all. That shows you a little bit of where my mind is.

Yes, more of that 'magic dust' as Stella walk along our path.

I caught some of the saturation on this plant but I am once again seeing a lens that doesn't auto focus sharply on a shot like this. It's not the first time it's happened and I have wondered for months if there is something wrong with my lens or with my camera. Another example of where my mind is and what will be discussed later.

Stella is following me I guess since no path is visible until I walk through it. I can tell where it is but it's hard to see for those that don't do the walk with us.

Here is another example of not getting sharp focus when I have in the past. The lens moved trying to get it into focus but couldn't. It was always blurry in AF. So I changed the setting to Single Point and it still would not focus sharply on the flower. This was the best I could get.

With seasonal allergies affecting Stella, there is always time to scratch whether inside or outside.

I tried to get Sadie to face me so I could take a photo of her wet face and ears but she wasn't going to let me and would turn no further than this. As I type this I hear a bird chirping outside of my window. It is where the nest is on top of the electric meter. I wonder if she has had her babies.

I could have cropped this photo but wanting to show just how isolated this small daisy was in the field. I have not seen a lot of them. Well Sadie has come into the computer room and is staring at the window with the birds chirping. I think I am hearing more than one. She is too.

Again the lens fails to focus sharply on the buds. I even tried to step back, zoomed out, but I wanted a close up shot. I am still in range where the lens should work with a sharper photo.

For some reason today the hounds were pretty good on this walk with minimum verbal herding. They started down the alternate path until they saw me take the original return path to the yard. Thru turned my direction. We enter the yard in the same spot as we do when we start the walk when taking the 'original' return path.

Looking up ahead I could barely see the worn path we have followed for years. After the field is cut that path will show up as being a darker green than the rest of the field.

Slowly but surely Stella catches up with us before we walk into the yard.

So not only were my boots, socks and feet wet, so were their face, ears and legs. I notice a little mucus in Stella's left eye which is common this time of year. It's the same way with Heidi also, who was stretched out on the couch in a deep sleep when we left. The click of the camera shutter would have woke her and I did not want to do that.

Some of you may be wondering what's going on by now. What do I have to say that would make you stay here at the end of the page. Well it's taken so long to write this post and edit the photos that I have ALMOST lost my train of thought, thus what I was going to ramble about ... LOL

My mind is always thinking about something it seems. In the past I have analyzed what I was thinking and confirmed I was not insane but I might be a little crazy. Some accused me of that or let me know in the past when I asked some pretty strange questions, or talked about what was on my mind. It kind of scared them about my mental state ... so therefore I am just a little hesitant in the rambling today.

Where do I start ??

I guess I could say that even though I feel content most of the time, my mind seems to be conflicted on a lot of stuff. For example I consider myself a private person and for that reason I don't post on this blog everything that is going on in my life or on my mind like other bloggers do.

Yet I have this inner need it seems to have a lot of blog followers, comments etc ... all things that private, hermit like people do not want. A bigger reason is really that for some strange reason I have this urge to 'let it out' and write more openly.

Or ... I wanted to travel but found enough reasons a few years ago not to. Or .... to blog or not to blog, cancel all social media, get away from the electronic life of smart phones, tablets and computers ... then realized I have been on computers since February 1993 and I doubt that I will ever stop my computer time. It feels like it's too much at times.

The thing about blogging is I love to write and story tell as some call it. Some say I am good at it while others say I am terrible and write like a 7th grader. Blogging brought me back to an old hobby I had not done for 25 years ... photography. Which I enjoy doing and enjoy posting them here, on my Wordpress blog and a couple on Facebook.

So just as I have had these type of questions of going back and forth in my mind about all that I mentioned, this morning I received a couple of articles from websites I follow through Feedly that fed this type of rambling ... one was about starting a photography blog and how to do it. Another was describing how to get your digital photography out into the internet where millions of people can see them.

Of course to be a successful blogger now days or to build a huge following for your blog or that suggestion of an online photography file for all to see ... I would have to do everything that I have tried to delete or drastically decrease my computer/internet time using those platforms recently.

Things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr etc.

This is not all I wanted to ramble about ... but again I have lost my train of thought and am having a hard time trying to remember what I wanted to say when I started this post. That really bothers me sometimes. Makes me wonder what is going on with me.

I have discussed all of this with a couple of close friends. One has traveled and blogged for years with millions of viewers on his blog, while my other friend has never blogged, doesn't read blogs and quit Facebook years ago although his wife and grown kids use it to keep in touch.

Oh, now I remember. I had read on another blog that it seems when you have a schedule written out ( I don't and won't while retired ) or a list of things to do, those rarely are followed or things don't get done just because there is a 'schedule' and a 'list'. Even though it's best to write them out and get them in front of you, it is still better to let life flow and do them as they come to you mentally.

Most of my retirement life if not all of it the past four years and two months, has been just that ... taking things as they come, if something I wanted to do doesn't happen then there is always tomorrow. I will keep it this way also.

This rambling is not about my 'to do' list that continues to draw dust.

Ah ... now it's coming back to me.

My rambling was all going to be about blogging and how those two articles this morning got me thinking even more about what I want to do. No worries, I am not stopping this blog but I am trying to get the guts to expand it ... and here is why.

In the past I have started blogs about different subjects, writing anonymous and would end up deleting those blogs a couple of days later. One reason was, if I don't want to take the time blogging on "Hounds and Other Stuff" then why am I taking time writing on that new blog about different subjects ???? Or, does anyone really care what I think of these things I have started a new blog about ???

Duh .....

The thing is I like to write. I write every day and at times I write on my two private blogs that only I can read. One is for a journal about cars, the house, maintenance, my thoughts in general living here THAT I DON'T WANT THE PUBLIC TO SEE. It helps when I have gaps in my memory and then I can look it up on my blog. Another blog is private and it is for my own sanity as I say. It's about more mental private thoughts, what my mind is thinking, how I am feeling and any problems. It is also a place I can vent about anything, a blog THAT I DON'T WANT THE PUBLIC TO SEE.

Now if there was some hacker or Blogger gets hacked to the point that these two blogs would become public, like your financial data on Experian, that is okay with me because there is nothing bad written on those blogs that I would not freak out if the public was to see them. I'm sure there are private things or thoughts you have that you don't want anyone else to know about ... right ??

The first private blog helps me remember from year to year about what goes on with my house or cars or me. For example, is my yard really moving due to ground swell and underground water in the field ... or is my mind thinking the worst? Did my shoulder feel this way last year or is the pain something new? The second private blog helps me go back years in the past and find out if this is a stage my mind is going through like in the past is this wild crazy thinking something new.

People like blogs that have drama, conflict, politics, religion or they read something and can find help with a problem they may have. Blogs about bloodhounds living in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana has very little of that, thus little interest ... unless Stella escapes, deer show up that they can chase or one of them has died. Really ... all of those topics have the most traffic and page views of any other topic on this blog with 'death' being the #1 visited post on my blog. How sick is that?

So my conflict is I would like to be more open in my writing, much like I was when I was spilling my guts on what I was thinking when trying to decide which RV to buy or where to travel. But that 'hermit' 'privacy' thing gets in my way.

That is where the writing comes in ... in the last six months to a year I have had the urge to write more about what is on my mind on this blog ... but don't ... then I start one of those new blogs with an anonymous author name ... similar to being 'a ghost writer'.

There have been times I've wanted to write a blog that helps those that are single, retired, fixed income but need more, barely making it ... but then I realize I have it better than most single retirees by a lot ... so how am I going to help someone that has a lot less than me?? I would guess they would feel more resentment towards me, than realizing I am trying to help them. Also, how long would I have things to write about?

Yet the thing is ... that would take time, time to write, time to research what I am writing about and more time on the computer ... time ... what I have been trying to avoid since being retired. Blogging like that on a regular basis turns into an 'commitment' .... and like that ex-girlfriend screaming at me decades ago "you have made a commitment to make no commitments" ... I agree with that ... especially since I am retired.

Still, that inner voice to write more and being more open is screaming inside my head to get out. Writing on a private blog is not satisfying enough anymore.

Don't worry, I'm fine, the hounds know I am okay and it's another great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

... what should I use for my anonymous name ... hmmmm ... I should probably just kick back, relax and stop thinking so much.

Note:  One thing to consider or I should consider, and something I have always thought about since I started blogging in October 2011. One blogger a lot of you know became so big on their blog that people would track them down boondocking to visit unexpectedly or would check out where they were staying. They had lost their privacy.

Another I just read about yesterday, has a huge blog following and had even written a couple of books, popular enough to go on the bookstore circuit to promote at their request ... had a stalker actually move into their town and is bothersome enough that they now have to move from a great small town in a great area.

Blogs with huge followings brings out that 1% or less of the bad element of people. That's quite a chance to take just by blogging.