It's Almost Too Quiet Today

Living on a hill a hundred feet from a major highway you get use to the traffic noise after residing here for 20 years. It's not evident until Sunday mornings, where it is so quiet around here that you could hear a pin drop. This morning was one of those days with a light rain mixed in.


As I was standing at the corner of the house taking my daily "2nd picture", I felt some light rain. With a forecast of a good chance of off and on rain throughout the day, increasing tonight, I knew our chances for three walks today might be slim. Sadie thought otherwise.

As soon as she saw that I had gone into the house to grab my light rain jacket, she was more than excited that we were going to take the chance of getting wet on this walk. The weather radar was solid with colors signifying rain. She went immediately into the tracking mode and followed the same deer scent along the tree line as she did Saturday morning.

Both of them were not into any kind of eating 'stuff' this morning, just Sadie inhaling deep enough with her nose pressed to the ground. I could hear her jowls move as she gathered all the information she could about who and what had been in 'her' field while we were sleeping.

Stella on the other hand didn't have time for any kind of work. She was into a casual morning stroll like she didn't have a care in the world.

Yet, Sadie was more intense than ever, collecting all of the information left by the scents her nose was picking up. When she has her ears out sideways from running to the next spot, you know she has too much work and not enough time to finish it.

Still, Stella was having none of the high intensity that Sadie was showing. She will and would walk at her own slow pace. When I mentioned the possibility of rain and we needed to get home ... she walked even slower.

She then decided that she would let me know that she was still in charge of this walk, by lagging behind and ignoring anything that sounded like me calling her.

To give you an idea how different the weather is this morning, not even the enhancement button could help this photo in lighting it up or making the sky blue again. The butterflies were gone this morning so the mosquitoes moved back into town. After three quick unexpected bites, I remembered my new can of repellant sitting back at home.

These rolls of hay told me a story this morning, showing that I really am aging through all my denials. It's why you see old men wearing their ball caps crooked ... because they feel like they are on straight. I notice that sometimes with mine if I look in the rearview mirror before driving.

Lately when I edit my photos I notice that things are not straight as they should be. Luckily in the cropping section of Apple Photos, you can turn a photo any direction to make them straight. These rolls of hay helped me straighten the picture out and remind me that my balance is a little off today. I'll not tell you just how much that editing adjustment was.

As I continued to walk home with not a drop of rain anywhere, the hounds lagged behind enjoying all the scents this field gives them. Bloodhounds can smell scent up to two weeks old, even in water. I always wonder what their noses tell them with 7 acres of wild stuff growing, deer traffic, and a cat or two.

I didn't have to bribe them this morning with a treat when they got back home. They seemed to be finished with their exploring for this morning and could feel it was time for their daily morning siesta.

Who would have ever thought those pretty white flowers really are weeds, and not good weeds either. While looking up their pictures on Google Images this morning, I clicked the button "view page" and ran into a blog named Dave's Garden writing about "weeds in my lawn". He has the same problem I do with moles and weeds in his yard because we both live next to a field.

Who would have ever thought something as pretty as this could have such an ugly but factual writeup. I guess I will NOT dig some of them up and plant them in my flower beds but then again if their seeds are viable for decades and they will fold around a fence or other plants ... maybe they would be good to hide my old cast iron railings in front of the carport.

Here is what he said about what I call "that white flower":

“The prettiest, but most annoying weed is the Convolvulus arvensis also called Field Bindweed or Swallowtail's Dress, as we call it in Romania. It chokes the plants and is one of the most invasive species. I am pulling out thousands of Field Bindweeds, not to mention how many times I have to unfold them from the fence or from my plants. The roots are deep, but sometimes they come out easily; still they have rhizomes which produce more sprouts. I've found out that their seeds are viable for decades and only one plant can produce 500 seeds."

Don't feel sorry for Sadie and Stella by the looks on their faces. They sniff their way all the way to the house, on EVERY walk. They walk into the house quietly not wanting to wake up Heidi after EVERY walk in the morning. Sadie jumps in her big leather chair with the ottoman to sleep and Stella lays down behind my computer desk chair so close that I can barely roll the chair back enough to sit down.

They will sleep almost to lunch time. If lunch is not served on time, Heidi will start barking and that leads Stella to howling or vise versa. Sadie does not bark or howl but stands right in front of the food container waiting me to pour kibble into their bowls.

I am about to post this and with the windows open I can hear how wet the highway is by passing cars and trucks. There still isn't much traffic as most people are in church. They have a lot of churches in this small rural town and almost as many bars ... I guess you have to even life out someway.

To long time readers this will come as no surprise. To new readers I might let you in on a secret ... I change my mind a lot. I don't have a lot of history on this blog to show that and back up the facts but long time readers can attest it's true.

So as I turned on my computer this morning and as always Google shows me 12 websites that I go to often, the small picture icon of this blog was one of the 12. Here is the problem ... I liked the way the blog looked in that picture better than my current blog home page.

Yet, that other one had all the links of information in the Footer of the blog and not on the Sidebar as it is now. I need to find a template (WordPress Theme) that has the look of the other one I used on Friday with the Sidebar I have today. With a day of rain in the forecast what better time than to look through templates again, using all of my data left with 4 days to go on my billing cycle ... and find a template that I like.

Luckily I have listed those I previewed and added an asterisk or a number of them to the ones I liked. It also occurred to me this morning when looking at my categories, I had nothing written here about the "Other Stuff" part of the blog. All of that history is on my old blog.

I could import all the posts and photos to this blog from the 6 year old blog on Blogger but the last time I tried that a year or so ago, there were a lot of issues between the different blog platforms. Blogger and WordPress don't play well together.

I'm okay with starting over, with what I consider a new blog. As I write about that "Other Stuff", categories will be added. But right now it's time for just one more cup of coffee and back to looking at templates.

(note: I know I shouldn't start a sentence with the word "But" and I also know I should place the period or question marks inside quotation marks) ... but to all the grammar police and spelling bee champions out there, I like starting a sentence that way and putting periods outside of quotation marks ... plus the spelling here will be only as good as the WordPress spellchecker. I am not a professional writer so you might find a mistake here and there when I write.

Yet, even on rainy days, its great living in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Take A Record Number Of Walks

It was after 5pm before I heard that familiar sound of a tractor right outside my computer room window. They had waited for the daytime sunshine to dry out the hay and flowers that were cut on Saturday, yet rain clouds were overhead and predicted rain was just hours away.

With the day being so nice and it being so much easier to take a hound walk, they took a record number of walks yesterday ... 4 of 'em. I could tell by the amount of hay laying in rows there just wasn't as much as in past years. With all the rain this spring and sunshine that was hard to figure out.

I was standing at the corner of the house taking this zoom'd photo. I didn't see the guys inside the tractor smiling until I downloaded the pictures. Were they joking about something or seeing me with a zoom lens pointed at them? They don't know they are on a blog seen by only a few people but scattered all over the world.

The raker and baler were working pretty well. Intellicast weather radar was showing rain about 50 miles away ... it never showed up nor did it rain after midnight where they said there was a 75% chance of rain. With the warmer than normal winter and the nice weather this spring I find it strange the small amount of hay they were able to bale.

By the time I took my two pictures that I take every day across the highway at the corn field and then from the corner of the house toward the back ... Sadie and Stella were already starting their walk. I decided while putting on my hiking boots that I would let each of them walk on their own ... where ever they wanted to go. With the field cut is is of course so much easier to keep track of them.

It looks so much different when the field is cut and baled. Basically back to being a 'clean' field and less stuff for them to find to eat. Most of their favorites are now inside those rolls of hay.

Back to the 4 walks day ... Sadie likes to walk after their noon lunch for walk #2. I usually wait about an hour after they eat before we do that. Then in late afternoon she and I are ready to take off again after all of them have slept all afternoon. With the weather so nice after 7pm ... that results in a 4th walk.

Of course that gets my number of steps I take per day above the normal range. It equates to almost 4 miles of walking and even at a slow pace my heart rate gets to a level where I get a workout. The days I mow the yard is just an added bonus.

Yet, my 'to-do' list has come to a complete stop. My Apple Reminder app tells me I have 7 of them overdue. All are fairly easy things to do but would be very time consuming. Some of them would take more than 8 labor hours to complete. For some reason, over the years I have been pretty consistent in that I am motivated to do things on that list in early spring and not again until the hottest time of the year ... mid to late August.

With the temps at 50° when we started the walk, it was sweatshirt and shorts weather on this morning walk. It was about at this point in the walk I remember this last winter when it was 9° and a strong cold wind blowing in my face. I prefer this weather to that freezing weather.

With total freedom given to each hound on this walk, they headed in opposite directions. Sadie went to the far right corner of the field and Stella took off toward the middle of the field and possibly to the NW, a direction she had never taken. That is typical for them when I don't 'herd' them during the walk.

Most of the time, even when they bale the field twice in the summer, they normally get 16-18 of these rolls of hay. They normally haul it away after it is rolled but it looks like they will store it here until their next cut in the fall or pull it as they need it next winter.

Once Stella glanced up and saw that Sadie was busy with what she found, she started walking in our direction without me yelling her name. What I missed was her running.

While I was taking a picture of the busted roll of hay, Stella had RAN from the middle of the field to the corner of this hay in the short time I took the picture.

Then it was back to 'noses to the ground' for each of them. I am sure that deer use this path to walk from the gully to the woods on the far north side of the field.

This reminded me of the time times I turn my lawn mower to start a new row and miss part of the taller grass. This is just one of the few spots in 7 acres that he missed with his much larger mower.

Sadie took off almost trotting on a scent she had found. She was not into chasing sparrows today because just outside the left edge of this picture there were 5-10 sparrows on the ground having breakfast. A few days ago Sadie would have sprinted after them but today her interest was somewhere else.

While Sadie and I walked toward the house, Stella was heading for the 'no fly zone'. I was sure she was headed for the woods. If that were to happen I would have had to go get her and lead her back to the house.

Back to my 'to do' list, I never worry about what I get done or don't get done. It will all be completed eventually but only when I feel like doing the type of work I will need to do. I'll have a major rush to get things done before last week of August when a new college football season starts.

It took a while and even longer than I had planned but Sadie and Stella finally made it back to the yard. They spent almost the same amount of time at the end of the walk in the area behind the house as it took for me to complete the walk.

With the fantastic weather we have been having I am back to picking up three different books to read and most of that reading is outside. With the disappearance of gnats, bugs and a few mosquitoes, the hounds have time to roam the field right behind the house and I can keep an eye on them while I read.

I've recently been cutting my time on the computer way below my daily limit of data. That daily limit I set on my spreadsheet stretches that 20Gb of data evenly over the 30-31 day period. Currently I have about 1.2 Gb's in the bank based on my decreased usage.

Besides my normal sports reading, Twitter, Facebook ... I've took a look at houses for sale the other day on Zillow and Realtor sites. There are 4-5 towns out west that have always interested me with 2 of them places I have lived in the past. Nothing excites me too much in the housing market.

Even though I really like my Mini Cooper Countryman I still look at what FJ's are for sale in a radius of 250 miles from home. Many to choose from but very very few have the same options I had with my blue one. I still will not make any trade until I decide when I travel and what I want to use as far as trailers. Nothing has changed my mind about traveling with the hounds.

Traveling with two bassets and one bloodhound wasn't that bad but hard. Two bloodhounds would make that impossible. I knew that and analyzed that before I decided to pick up Stella and bring her home. I could walk Winston and Heidi with a "splitter" and one leash. When I have tried that here with Sadie and Stella ... it didn't work and was a total disaster each time I tried it.

I have a few more weeds to cut along the driveway this afternoon. It is so tempting to buy and spray weed killer and make that all so easy but I don't want any chance of that getting on the paws of the hounds or in the air. So I will continue to cut them as low as possible with my weed eater and let the sun kill them.

Not sure but I might post again tonight after we take some afternoon photos.

I cannot believe how long this fantastic weather has lasted here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Have A 'Tornado Watch' Issued

I have to admit it's pretty nice to have the windows back open with the sound of birds singing outside. I wasn't sure how much we would do today since rain was all over the radar.

Once again we woke up before daylight but I was able to convince Sadie that we were still retired and nothing takes place until after daybreak. With Stella snoring away, there wasn't much to discuss. We still got outside early though and the rain was so light you can barely hear it. Sadie and Stella stopped in their tracks to decide what their next move would be.

After a couple of cups of coffee, the reading of all of my sports sites, it was time for our first walk of the day. I was hopeful to get it completed before the rains came. Intellicast radar was showing rain about 6 miles to the west of us. Yet, when we took off there were blue skies and sunshine to the east.

I guess I didn't need the 25' retractable leash after all and could have brought the camera on the morning walk.

Right after lunch we tried again to do something outside. I needed to pick up some sticks in the yard and thought about moving the Z4 out of the way so I could pull my ladder out of the shed and get up on the roof. With rain in the forecast I decided the roof could wait another few days for me.

We have 7 acres behind our yard and neither hound wanted to go any further away than the chair I was sitting in. I found out soon after why ... it started raining again.

Yesterday afternoon, for the first mow of the year, I fired up the lawn mower without any problems and cut just part of the lawn ... the area where the grass was taller than anywhere else. It looks like crap now after the winter and mole damage but it will fill back in and look good after the spring rains. I am thinking about installing some kind of edging between the yard and driveway this spring/summer.

You cannot tell but I did a couple of laps down the edge of the yard and the driveway, then a small triangular section to cut the high grass. Heidi seems to produce some pretty strong fertilizer over the winter.

Speaking of Heidi ... I think her coat and skin look the best it has since September 2014. That next month in 2014 is when her skin issues went ballistic and out of control with loss of hair, all paws and legs were bare and at times sore and raw. She has been on nothing but straight kibble this past year, no meds or supplements.

It has been 32 days since I switched her to SPORTMiX manufactured by Earthborn Holistic Pet Foods. It is strange because the first ingredient is lamb "meal", no lamb. That is followed by brown rice, peas etc ... she has gained her weight back and hasn't looked this good in a long time. All of this improvement has happened in the past month.

Besides her picture, I took these next pictures with my iPhone 6s yesterday. I forget sometimes that it does have a good camera and in some cases, I think it takes a sharper picture than my Nikon D3200 does. These next 3 pictures were posted without any editing. You can see how tall the grass was in that section before I mowed yesterday afternoon.

Stella looked down about the time I pushed the button to take the picture. It's hard to tell but she does have both of her eyes open.

I am still undecided what to do about the weeds growing in the driveway. It seems like they have actually multiplied in number since I was on my hands and knees for four days in August 2015 pulling out weeds one at a time.

I am thinking of spraying a mixture of water and vinegar this year as my weed killer on the driveway and the river rock in back. Anyone have something that works to kill weeds from non chemical homemade brew?

Can you see any difference in the sharpness of the iPhone pictures compared to my edited Nikon D3200 pictures?

After all the hounds and I came back inside due to the rain by 1pm it was sunny and blue skies outside. It was hard to believe we were to get severe thunderstorms with possible tornado activity later tonight. During the light rain I played around a little on the blog and changed the page fonts, the post title fonts to PT Sans.

Since we could not tell if it was going to rain or not because the weather 'up there' was moving at a fast pace and different directions ... we decided to take our 2nd walk of the day.

This first picture is taken toward the SW.

I could tell that Stella was going to lag behind and I was going to let her do whatever she wanted. I had the 6' leash for her in my back pocket just in case it started to pour rain and we needed to get back to the house fast.

This was taken toward the north. The camera doesn't pick up the fast movement of the clouds going in a left to right direction.

Shocked to see Stella was headed our way. What concerns me a little is last year she would have been running full speed to catch up and the past few months she hardly runs at all.

It was only 3 minutes after that first sky picture that I aimed the camera in the same southwest direction to see sunshine and blue skies ... 3 minutes!!

Sadie was oblivious to strong winds from the southwest, indicated by the blowing hay. It takes a strong wind to blow her tail from the upright position she normally carries it. All she knew was she was on 'her' walk and that is all that mattered.

Stella stayed fairly close and didn't veer off too many times.

7 minutes later I pointed the camera once again toward the southwest. The wind was now strong enough I had a hard time keeping the camera steady.

Stella walked slowly all the way back to the house. She was sound to sleep minutes after going back inside the house after the walk. That seems to be the norm for both bloodhounds.

We were not finished with the walk yet, but this was the sky in the west, 11 minutes after the first sky picture in this post was taken.

At 3:07 pm they issued a Tornado "Watch" until 10pm tonight. The new stats show there is a 50% chance for two of them and 20% chance of 1 strong one. All through central Indiana, but my county is colored in to be included. Possible lime size hail with wind gusts up to 70mph.

A month ago or so, it was a 5% chance one night and we had two funnel clouds touch down 70 miles away. Never lost satellite internet connection that night and was able to track live radar to tell if the hounds and I needed to head for the center of the house since we do not have a basement.

So in preparation the iPad and iPhone are being charged to 100%. I've never had damage with these warnings but have had some close calls. It's always best to have a plan and be prepared just in case.

I imagine the old storm windows will be rattling and making a little noise tonight while all three hounds sleep in their normal spots in the living room. Sadie will be in her large leather chair while Stella and Heidi will share the couch. A seat for me is always optional.

The windows are open today here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana .. it smells like Spring.