The Hounds Had A Visitor Today

I knew when I decided yesterday not to rake up the excess grass that a plan was coming together. I prepared last night by putting on a layer of Gorilla Glue to the pieces of my shoe sole that was pulling apart on my old Merrell "foot gloves". They don't make that trail runner anymore and now I wish I would have bought three pair instead of the two pair I bought ... great shoes. Yet with the glue repair, the shoes might last another year or two.

The third part of the plan fell into place very early this morning ... it was 68° when we headed out on our walk this morning. If felt fantastic and not a hint of humidity as cold air was blowing from the north. After a good night sleep with the windows open, I could tell there was going to be some motivation I was going to have to take advantage of. At the time I didn't know how much I would do today.

Stella started with a surprise by heading out into the field for the walk, directly on the path. I had planned to get my feet soaked and wore the appropriate shoes and sock.s What I didn't expect was just how old that heavy dew was as I could feel it squishing in my shoes as we approached the first corner where we make the first turn.

I could tell early in the walk that the theme of the morning was going to be deer scat. Even Sadie was not interested in her daily exploring, which surprised me ... but that wasn't going to be the biggest surprise of this morning.

It was nice to see Stella not veering off the path anywhere. Sure, she might move six to ten feet away but she was always headed in our direction. I was thinking about how cold my feet were more than anything else.

Since it was finally Saturday, after feeling it was for the past two days, I was also thinking about yard work since it looked like it was going to be a great day and nowhere near 90°. I've had it with all the weeds. The more I cut them with the weed trimmer, the more they multiply. So I decided I was going to go "pro" and buy the stuff that is so strong that 2oz of it in a gallon of water to spray on the weeds was what I was going to buy.

The hounds never go down along the driveway bank, the center of the driveway, and never down to the mailbox ... those were the areas I was going to spray. Plus I wanted to spray the left side of the driveway culvert. With my feet freezing and wet I was also going to look for a pair of rubber shoes ... I was thinking that I could find a pair at the local farm supply store.

Remember in all of these photos, that Stella is the bloodhound that wears the collar, Sadie does not, until she makes a trip to the vet so I can use the 6' leash. Sometimes they are hard to tell apart.

The more I thought about the yard I knew I had cut it too short the other day. It looks like crap yet every one of my neighbors along the highway cut their yards down to the ground or no longer than 1" tall. Obviously I have different types of grass than they do as I can also tell that difference in the winter when my grass is green and theirs is brown.

So the longer we walked, plans for today started taking shape.

Are you wondering about the 'visitor' I mentioned in the blog post title?

At this point of the walk there is nothing out of the ordinary going on. It has been so long that I can't even remember the last time I saw deer in the field. With Stella no longer running I can't remember if she even chased deer last summer and so far this year we have not seen any close enough to chase. Deer is usually our only kind of visitor that we run into in the field.

Not today though ... it was an entirely different kind of visitor. As I turned away from the hounds to continue my walk .... look who is staring at us.

A great looking Beagle with a collar and tags. A hound that I had never seen before but obviously a possible neighbor. He/she stood motionless looking at the hounds. My immediate thought was I had better get ready to run because I was positive the bloodhounds would be sprinting within seconds.

Just like a split second the Beagle takes off for the house it came from. It's short ears were flying and it was running as fast as it could. Where was the bloodhound baying I was expecting  to be hearing and the blur of reddish hound hair flying by me after the Beagle ???

No sounds from Sadie or Stella.

Once the Beagle was out of sight I turned to check on the bloodhounds ... they had not moved an inch the whole time !!!

Stella eating deer scat as fast as possible.

Sadie eating deer scat as fast as possible.

It didn't matter to me what they were eating today. All I know, the day was beautiful and I didn't have to chase the hounds on the run into the north woods where the Beagle was headed.

Stella took her time to get home.

Evidently wet grass taste good also.

You may have noticed with all of the photos this morning the tint is a little different ... I changed the setting back to 'automatic no flash' from 'landscape' so the photos wouldn't be so dark.

As you can tell I am not happy about the yard. Besides the clumps of excess grass from cutting it a notch lower or about 1-1/2" I have thought all year from the first cut in the spring that my blade needed sharpening. I don't have a shop or bench to mount a vice so getting my blade sharp on my own wasn't going to happen. The local hardware store gave me a quote of $10 but since it is the middle of the summer the line is long to get anything done dealing with mowers or blades.

So while I was at the farm supply store, name left off intentionally, wandering down the aisles admiring their large inventory .... I came up on a new blade that not only was the correct size but even mentioned the brand name of my mower "Craftsman" ... I was in luck for $12.

So with the '6hp Monster' having a nice new sharp blade I had to try it in the backyard ... that led me to mow the whole backyard. Not only were those clumps of grass disappearing but the grass was being cut better than it had all spring and summer.

Sadie and Stella were more than ready to inspect the yard and gave me a thumbs up. I knew there was a reason I didn't want to rake that grass the other day.

With the same problem in the front yard I decided to mow that also. I mowed at an angle, a different direction than I did the other day. It was also the best cut I have had all summer.

Stella was good again today while I was gone. I believe her problem with separation anxiety is finally over. Whenever I say "I've got to go" ... to buy groceries, to the library or to buy dog food ... she will walk into the bedroom on her own and lay down because she now knows that is where she stays when I am gone.

Where was Heidi during all of this beautiful weather??? Where she always is ... stretched out as long as possible on the couch sleeping. In fact she was sleeping when I drove the store and was still sleeping when I walked into the house when I got back ... some watch dog.  LOL

So after all the time I spent mowing, pulling weeds out of the mulch beds, weed trimming and spraying weed killer on the bank and driveway ... it was time for a shower, 600mg of ibuprofen and a 32oz glass of ice cold water ... I put this post together from the MacBook Air, sitting on the couch enjoying the Reds game at Wrigley Field.

Oh, I didn't find any rain boots or shoes at the farm supply store but saw a lot of Carhartt clothing on sale.

All is good today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... weather is beautiful.

Hounds Decide I Needed To Work

I'm not sure what I would do if I didn't have Sadie getting me away from my morning coffee, out of my desk chair and out into the field every morning. She will always sit quietly at the doorway into my computer room. While sitting straight and proud, almost like a pose, she will give me her stare down letting me know that it's time for a walk. This also happens throughout the day no matter where I might be.

It's going to be another beautiful day here in the tropics. I've adjusted to the colder temps and have waved bye to summer. I love hot weather but I do like the change of seasons. There is a little bit of good in every season and each has it's highlights with likes and dislikes. The hounds? Same stuff different day and I'm not sure they even care about the changes.

You might notice my photos lately on these morning walks are a little bit brighter or better quality. I have had some strange adjustments to the Daylight Savings time change we did last weekend. Where I should be getting up an hour earlier I seem to be going to bed an hour later and getting up later. That slides the morning walk from around 9am to 10am or later, thus the change in lighting for taking pictures.

Whenever I see Stella ahead of Sadie on these walks and/or Sadie venturing into the heavy brush between the field and woods, I suspect there has been a lot of deer traffic in the early morning hours. The local news on tv and in the newspaper is saying there is an over abundance of deer in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. Some of the state parks are closing to the public, only open to deer hunters to thin out the herd of deer roaming in the area.

When Sadie was staring at the woods earlier in the walk I thought I could even hear the footsteps of deer moving over the leaves that had fallen to the ground. I listened really closely and thought it would be the chance to walk into those woods, look down into the gulley to see if I could grab a picture or two of them. The sound I heard though was not deer but the sound of falling leaves.

The worn path on the taller brush near the back of the field shows where deer move from this field, jump over a very short old metal fence into the field behind us. Stella was sure this is where they went sometime before we got there. She is right. I remember about 7 years ago in December, Sadie as a 2 year old took off  running in this same exact area, over that fence and into that field running as fast as possible for deer she saw. the 5-6 deer were out sprinting her by a mile but she thought she could catch them.

I couldn't catch her and it wasn't long before she was out of my sight. So I ran home to drive my truck around the the back of the field I had last seen her. I thought she might be sneaking around the huge turkey farm or at least see her wandering back home ... she was nowhere. I looked for an hour, it started snowing again and no sign of her. A little after 1pm I hear something hit my aluminum door in the carport ... there she stood ... 4 to 5 hours later. Needless to day she slept the rest of the day and almost missed her late afternoon meal.

So far Stella's periods of disappearances have lasted no longer than 45 minutes to an hour. She doesn't like to miss any meals and food is her real motivation for anything she does inside or out.

It's always interesting to observe the routines of all three hounds. They change their routines at times but most days I don't have to say a thing and they repeat the same walks day after day. As you know Heidi disappears from this blog and outside until cold weather is over ... she has always done that since I picked her up in June 2011.

Even when we are on the 'alternate' path home I can see other narrow single paths of worn grass where the deer run at night. Maybe I need to buy and set up a couple of field cameras to capture the wild life between midnight and 6am.

For the second day in a row the moon was back again. I noticed that Al up in Canada on The Bayfield Bunch blog took the same picture I did of the moon yesterday. It's times like these I wish I had a longer lens to get closer to the moon.

On the way back this morning the hounds kept drifting further away from me. I was getting down to two choices. Either leave them and let them do what they wanted knowing they would eventually come home or walk over to Stella and tug on her collar to get her back toward my direction. Many times she will start moving once she sees me heading her way.

Yesterday afternoon I did attempt to rake some leaves but those first few that flipped over with the rake was showing moisture on them. I would prefer to rake them completely dry so they will burn faster and better. Today might be Day 1 of the 2017 Leaf Project. Until I looked at past blogs for the post about our Leaf Project, I thought we were late this year but that is not the case. In 2016 we were raking them this week. In 2015 we were getting all the leaves taken care of in late October.

Here is the 2015 Leaf Project Supervision Crew.

Stella lagged behind at the end of the walk but nothing major. She stepped inside the yard and had to stop for one of her back scratching exercises. Once she saw Sadie and I almost ready to make the turn into the carport, she came running.

A tentative plan was to rake the leaves once they dried out a little more, possibly this afternoon. While the hounds took their lunch break outside they decided that not only were the leaves dry enough to rake but the grass was tall enough to mow. If I mowed first would it mulch the leaves good enough to get me out of raking?

Stella has been staring off into space a lot lately as if there are new places she would like to check out if only I would let her, or if only there wasn't a highway in that direction, if only ....

Sadie checked for some fresh soft mounds of dirt to eat since it rained this past weekend. You can also see with her standing in the yard just how tall the grass is after a weekend of rain. I've been told the ground is still warm although the temperatures have dropped, so mowing season may not be over yet.

I'm posting this because I like it and it's just a little bit different for a photo taken in the middle of the day.

For doing yard work you cannot beat weather like this.

I still wasn't happy with the amount of leaves left in the yard after mowing. I need a new rake since my old one was missing a few teeth after I had the plastic rake to near to the fire last year. I headed to the local hardware store and picked up a new one. Of course when I got home I had to try it out, so that is the 'clean' area you see. The wind was blowing from the south as I raked into it. So it was a good place to stop and wait for better wind conditions before raking the rest of the yard.

The heavy storms on Sunday washed out some of my old mulch, so a short trip to the landscaping biz where I bought a few bags of new Cyprus mulch to add today. I had to work fast because Sadie kept disappearing on me today but would come running when called. She was always too far outside her boundary.

It's good I stopped when I did. As I sat in front of the computer afterward with a cold glass of water, I had an email I needed to reply to for confirmation. One of the parts for the Z4 has to come from Germany and is delayed. My other parts are in route and due to arrive early next week. That gives me time to finish the leaves for the year.

Tomorrow I will trade parking spaces with the FJ, which will give me more room to work. I'll either drive the Z4 up on ramps or jack it up high enough to slide some jack stands underneath it. I am thinking the jack stands might be the best option while I am working under the car.

At a website called realOEM.com I was not only able to find a detailed diagram of the parts I needed but also where they go and what screws, nuts, plugs or clips go with each part. I've printed those out. With the help of those diagrams and some YouTube videos I have a clear picture of what the process will be to replace the damaged parts under the Z4.

I enjoy this type of work as long as it's on occasion and not a job. It just proves how old I am sometimes when my knees and back don't enjoy being in different position under a car to reach to connect a screw or snap in a part. I've made sure I have enough Ibuprofen in stock.

It was a great day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... much more done than expected.