Snow Melts Under 32°

The day started off at 19° and very very bright sunshine. It stayed that temperature for almost three hours before the heat wave hit mid afternoon where it rose to a high of 26°. The temps didn't bother the hounds and each time I let them out I practically had to drag them back inside. You can tell the hounds and the dog had a pretty good day today.

Drive By Shooting Yesterday

As you can tell by the number of photos today it was slow and not much was done. Blog editing, a siesta, lunch, more editing and the hounds and the dog slept a lot. I was told the air quality was poor at sunrise but better quality by late afternoon. We had a drive-by shooting yesterday in the middle of the afternoon on one of the main roads, Fry Blvd. Strange for such a small town of 44,000. Car and truck were side by side moving down the street when shots were fired. The 19 year old victim died later. It will be interesting to see the reason for it.

The Hounds Are Back After A Day Off

That glimmer of sunshine this morning proved to me that yesterday's post was missing not because of writer's block but overcast skies. It has been hard to come up with words lately, so yesterday after I deleted what I has written and saved, I just thought it was because of lack of words. It was the sunshine or lack thereof.

Neither type of sky bothers any of the hounds. Sadie is always ready to go for a walk, no matter what time of day or night. She hears that word and she immediately starts hopping up and down and making a noise somewhere in between a bark and a pant.

Stella's nose is nudging the round door knob trying to get it to open while Heidi is buried deep inside her winter sleeping bag. Why a sleeping bag?  I've noticed she doesn't have any kind of skin rash sleeping on the sleeping bag compared to wool blankets.

Unlike yesterday where I let Stella hang back, this morning she ran past me to catch up with Sadie. Maybe the sunshine makes her feel different also.

There is still enough stuff to investigate whether you stay behind or lead the walk.

Again it's nice there is no wind. That makes the temps much warmer, tolerable and the only thing different in the walks from six months ago is the amount of clothing worn.

No signs of deer in quite a while but Sadie always seems to sprint around the first turn as if there were.

If I can get Stella to this point in the walk, it is usually safe to assume that she will not disappear into the wooded area. It is just past what I call the 'first turn'.

Looking back through my photo library for the past year looking for one particular photo that was not coming up in my search, it's neat to see what the weather was like this time last year. We had already had our first light snow and it was much colder than this year. If the weather of the past few weeks is going to be our winter this year, I'm all for it.

I heard the thundering sound of Sadie running up behind me as I walked along the back of the field. She has been faster than the camera this week. Which reminds me, this morning I adjusted my auto focus setting to 'single point' from 'auto area'. I did that because it seemed to me a lot of my photos lately were burred when I would try to focus in on the hounds.

When Sadie has her left paw raised while standing that usually means she is even more focused processing information her nose has found, than she normally does.

I need some help from the camera or photography 'experts'. I left this photo as is, with the tower leaning to the right. When I looked through my view finder, this tower was lined up straight with he vertical markings inside the view finder ... but came out leaning around 2°. I've seen this in my other photos the past month or so.

Is my camera or lens out of adjustment for some strange reason or is it an 'old thing', much like feeling your ball cap is on straight but the mirror shows it's on your head crooked?

I was shocked to see that Stella had made it 10'-20' feet past the first turn and was within view. That meant I would not have to send out the search teams for her.

When I told Sadie "we're going home", she was all for it and started running immediately toward the path.

Stella of course acted like she didn't hear a word but was at least headed in the right direction.

Once she saw that Sadie was getting away and might find things before she would ... she took off sprinting.

This photo is one that I adjusted 2° to show the highway that I know is level, was level in the photo instead of going downhill to the right.

From Stella's tail I am sure one of her parents was a 'black and tan' bloodhound. It's also the reason her original owner named her 'Dipstick'. Changing her name was one of the first things I did when I brought her home in August 2015.

With my flashlight finding the cat eyes in the dark this past week, we now know that is the scent the hounds pick up in the yard. With the sun out today it might be the right time to bring 32gl can with me and pickup tree limbs laying in the yard from the recent high winds we have been having at night.

Here are some highlights from yesterday morning's walk. I did post a few pictures on my Wordpress blog yesterday but only a short intro for content. The rest of the photos were taken in overcast skies and an auto focus setting of 'auto area'.

Only three photos were taken after yesterday's lunch. With the cold wind blowing all of the hounds were not out longer than a few minutes.

Hard to believe it's Friday already. For doing nothing everyday the week sure flew. The recycling bin is loaded in the FJ so I'm headed to the recycling center right after I post this. I'll take a few photos along the way and post them later today or add them to tomorrow's post.

It's a cool and sunny day this morning in 'the 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.