The Day Turned Into A Very Busy One

Right after I posted Tuesday morning post, I put on my NorthFace snow boots because I knew was early enough that the shaded parts of the field would be too wet for the waterproof hiking boots I have. We've been doing the walks about an hour earlier than normal times but it would be past noon before this part of the field dries out.

Sadie took off like she was shot out of a cannon and her nose was to the ground, she was gone.

With Sadie moving in all kinds of directions, zig-zag, circular ... Stella was able to catch up with her even with her slow pace in the opposite lane I was walking in.

I guess she feels okay but it is certainly different than a year ago when she was the aggressor when playing, running full speed through the field and being the dominate one over Sadie.

Just like that Stella disappeared. I looked in the far right corner, not there. I looked to the right of me, not there. I looked behind me, not there. Finally after starting my search over, I barely saw her deep inside these wild plants that I have not identified. She had found some deer scat and she would not leave, even after I tugged on her collar.

Sadie was running all over the field on a fresh scent. You can tell her speed by the rear leg kicked up and in the photo below, her ears flying in the wind. I am not sure what she was smelling but it was leading her on a wild chase.

Sadie's nose never came off the ground as she ran through the field.

While walking and trying to keep track of the hounds there is always time to find some neat flower arrangements.

Stella was almost getting away in the opposite direction when I turned to check on her. Once I yelled "over here" she started her path to meet Sadie and I on the path heading home. I am thinking tomorrow morning I will plan to let her roam on her own after we make that first turn and let her decide how long she stays out with me within sight of her.

She wasn't close to my path when she had to stop and join Sadie in her search.

Last June, they left a large roll of hay in this spot for weeks after most of the other rolls had been moved out of the field. When they finally picked up that roll, there was a bare spot that later turned to all green grass. It is now one of the taller parts of hay in the 7 acre field.

I had to extend my lens to catch Sadie ... she was running down the path which is rare for her.

Stella and I stayed way behind, walking Stella's pace. Last year she would have been running to Sadie trying to get ahead. This still tells me something is wrong with her. Something that is not showing up with vet inspections, normal appetite and water intake. I wonder if her hips have become arthritic?

Toward the end of the morning walk I was going to pull out the power washer from the closet, sitting behind the dog food container and start the annual house, carport wash down. The Mini Countryman looked clean after the drive through the rain last week at high speed, so it did not need washed.

Then ... my habit of procrastination started ... "I'll just unload the pictures into the computer" ... then "I'll answer this email first" ... then "let me catch up on Facebook and Twitter" ... "ah there's a few new blog posts to read" ....

And the clincher ... "there is always tomorrow morning, I'm retired" ... "I could still do it this afternoon" ... "I always work best in the afternoons"

So Sadie and Stella let me know it was time for their lunch. I decided I'd unload the photos from this morning and then add more later and make this a huge blog post with too many photos. I also knew I would not be blogging again until tonight, thinking again that blogging at the end of the day is the best for me ... IF I am to get anything done during the day.

I wrote all of this earlier thinking I would add a bunch of pictures and write more this afternoon but my afternoon was so productive I just finished about an hour ago and I am too tired to add to this post. 

I will just say that "procrastination" was wiped out as the hounds ate lunch ... I power washed the house, carport, front porch and the fence along the driveway. I should be rested enough by tomorrow to write a little about it and sort through all of the project pictures I took.

It was an afternoon of solid work here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.

Sadie Still Cannot Find The Black Cat

As the hay gets almost shoulder high at the edge of the yard, other places in the field it is not as high as my knees. With this comes pollen and that is a huge problem for me. There are times even the allergy tablets are not good enough, at least the ones I buy off the counter. Maybe I need to start taking some of that 12 hour stuff. Anyway, all of us survived the holiday weekend.

The highlight of the weekend was early Sunday morning while sitting at the computer, when I heard a familiar sound of a helo. It sounded as if it was landing right outside my window in the field. I knew there was not enough room at the landscaping business for it to land nor behind the trees, but the familiar sound was extremely loud. That could only mean it was hovering about the power lines and other towers that are behind the trees and run through the gully.

I wasn't quick enough to get outside to take a better picture, so this was zoomed through a window screen and did not turn out as clear as I had hoped. It would have been gone if I had gone outside. It was hovering right above that tower for a few minutes, hidden by the tree limbs.

As it turned out, we had not started the morning walk yet. I am not sure how the hounds would have reacted to something that loud and strange. Had I known the helo would be more exciting than the Indy500 I was going to watch later, I am not sure I would have tuned in. All I'll say is about the race ... I'm liked who won, there were too many yellow flags, it took too much time to watch, too many commercials again and a spectacular crash that without modern safety technology the driver would not have survived that crash in the past let alone 'walk away' from his crashed car as he did.

With it hotter than usual, more gnats and mosquitos, and the additional treat of plugged sinuses ... the walks for me were not that enjoyable. Sadie of course loved them and demanded 3 per day. Stella is stuck in the gear for low energy but managed to make it through them at her pace.

Monday was so quiet inside and outside you could hear a pin drop. Very little to no traffic on a major US Highway. The heat, although not really that staggering hot, zapped the hounds where they spent most of their day sleeping inside. Heidi had not moved so long in her stretched out position on the couch I had to look close one time to see if she was still breathing. She slept for hours in one position.

I use to put this view of the field across the highway as my 'starter' picture for the blog everyday. I included it this morning because I found the different shades of green to be interesting, along with the freshly planted field behind it. You can see the reason why they replanted part of the field in the post before this one.

You have the taller grass along the highway that will eventually be mowed by the state highway department if not the local field owner. That turns into the deep green of the corn growing, somewhere around a month old, then the dried out light brown of the dirt they cleared on Saturday which was all under water a few weeks ago.

As the wild ragweed surrounds and covers my burn pile for next fall, I decide to mow back to that pole some say is my property line. 70 some years ago my driveway continued down that direction as a one lane brick road where they could bring their farm equipment to work the field behind my house. From what I was told that equipment was a team of mules and a row of plow blades. There are a lot of fallen trees back in that woods.

Even though this Tuesday felt like a Monday when we got up, it was the same routine I have written about before. When Sadie wasn't at the door looking to come inside as I poured my first cup of coffee, I decided I needed to go outside and see if I could find her. I didn't see anything that was tanish/red walking through the taller field.

Then right at the end of my search, I saw her tail moving in the tall hay.

I don't know if she was tracking the black cat's path backwards but once she arrived in the yard she had locked on the scent. It was confirmed in the middle of the night fairly close in this vicinity, the black cat is what Sadie smells. I didn't get up to see it last night in the early morning hours, but I heard one of the biggest cat fights in the middle of the night and loud enough it seemed to be right outside the window.

At least the cats keep the mice away. Sadie only goes on this search in this area the first thing in the morning. Other times we are outside, the only time she had gone in this area is if I walk over there. With the shade, it's the best part of the yard.

She finally decided that was all the time she had for the search. It was time for her short nap until our morning walk ... all have been quite wet lately and I've had to wear my snow boots to keep my feet dry.

With the cooler temps forecasted, it would be a good day to high pressure wash the fence, the house and carport. It will be interesting to see if I can produce enough motivation to get that finished today. Yesterday I got everything I wanted to do finished, so I have a clean house, a clean kitchen and two loads of laundry done.

Apples free app that came with my iPhone called "Reminders" does it's job well. All of those 'to do's' I am behind on show up in red print along with the number of them waiting for me to complete. they show up on all of my Apple devices so there is no way to escape.

I didn't wash the Mini last week because I thought it was going to rain on Sunday but I cannot use that excuse anymore. That might be the trigger to get me moving in the direction of the high pressure wash machine.

I have lived her a long time, almost 20 years, and it is amazing how a lot of things change while many stay the same. The weather is always changing yet the land and trees stay the same. This photo was taken October 2014 in one of the most colorful falls we have had in a while.

Sadie is telling me it's time for our first walk of the day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Farmers Try A 2nd Time

As the hounds and I woke up from our mid-day siesta around 3:30pm on Saturday, I noticed I had missed all the action while sleeping, dreaming to the point of not knowing if it was nighttime or what. With rain tomorrow they were going to disc some of their field and re-plant that corn the floods washed out a few weeks ago.

I had just let the hounds back inside and was checking for emails and texts back in the computer room when I heard them starting their tractors.

With two working at the same time it would not take long, even though this field that looks so small, it curves to the right around the trees and goes for almost a half mile behind the 2-3 houses across the highway.

With them both hugging the side of the front field they were going to leave that corn the way it was since it was not affected by the water. Not being a farmer I found it interesting to see how they would plant new corn in rows lined up with their corn already growing. The rows would have to go the same direction for picking in the fall.

It's just like mowing your lawn ... just a little bigger 'mower' and a little more 'lawn'.

With their planter waiting in the wings to use when they were finished tilling up their previous planting, I could tell they were as aware of tomorrow's weather as I was. They couldn't wait any longer and doing the same thing twice has to be expensive.

A couple of hours later as we headed out for our walk, they were in the planting mode and from my eye, those rows looked close enough to get the job done smoothly next fall when they run their combine through the field.

The local news said the other night that before the floods a few weeks ago, only 56% of corn had been planted in the state of Indiana due to the wetter than normal spring weather. With many other farmers in the state losing their crop that was planted before the floods, they did not discuss financial losses but it had to be huge. Farming is hard work, sometimes dictated by mother nature.

I'll not include a picture from the past in this post, I wanted to keep it just on this farming operation of today.

Only Two Hound Walks Today

With my iPhone weather app showing me a temperature of "feels like" 87° early in the afternoon, the hounds and I decided we would come back and try to start our day again at 3:30pm. There was no sense in trying to fight that kind of heat for our mid-day hound walk especially that close to lunch. (bloat in bloodhounds).

Even then when we went outside Sadie was showing me that it was still hot three hours later so we might have to wait a couple of hours for those temps to get a little lower. I knew when she didn't beg for a walk and headed back to the door, that it was our first hot day of the year.

Heidi showed her speed and agility by sprinting from the center of the yard to the driveway and then slowly walk up the drive toward the house. She went inside to continue her sleeping marathon for the rest of the afternoon.

It's very rare to see Stella ever wag her tail on a walk, especially when she is with Sadie and their noses are to the ground. Not sure what it was but both were highly interested and their tail movement told me they were about to lock in on their target. I was pretty sure I could not catch them if they took off following what they had found.

Luckily Sadie decided she didn't think it was that important and peeled off to continue their walk. Stella had other plans though. I am sure she thought if I thought she was tracking that I would leave her alone and then slowly veer in the direction of the neighbor's woods ... a place she has not visited in quite a while due to adult supervision.

With the gnats and mosquitos locking into my sweating wrist and lower arms I was more than happy to increase my past telling the hounds to 'come on, let's go' ... Sadie followed me ... umm Stella is on her own schedule.

As I zoomed my camera lens to see if she was going to come faster or not ... I didn't say a word and just turned around and headed home. Those mosquitos had called out their friends with their silent secret code and I was being eaten alive.

As I sped my walk, I turned to do a final check on Stella to see her trotting faster toward Sadie and I. She must have realized that we were serious about getting back to the house. Sadie had even moved way out in front of me, not because of the mosquitos but because she was too hot.

I could tell when Sadie turned around she was also out of patience waiting for her friend. She checked herself to see if Stella was ever going to catch up with us.

Eventually Stella cruised on into the yard but she was in no hurry while Sadie was standing at the door wanting inside.

Although the sunshine has disappeared Wunderground shows rain in Indianapolis tomorrow down to a 50% chance from the 75+% it was showing yesterday. Since those cars travel 2.5 miles in 40 seconds or a football field within a second, they don't need a lot of time to get the race in tomorrow. I think I see a small window in the graph where they can fit it in between 11am-2pm.

A friend suggested to go wild on my computer and plug my other 27" monitor with the non-retina screen into my new iMac and use that as a 2nd screen. Only out of curiosity, I am going to try that and see how that would look with two monitors again like I had for the last 7 years. It does come in handy at times when working on spreadsheets, plus the Activity Monitor is always in view.

Gretchen - 1975

After returning to college after my 2 year enlistment in the Marines, I heard about a 'dog rescue' in town and thought I'd check it out. As I walked into the old house, that was clean and organized all the different dogs were blocked off from the living room where my interview took place with the man that ran it. YOU did not chose your dog, THEY decided what dog was perfect for you after hearing about where you lived, what your daily schedule was and how many hours you would be with your dog.

She was a cross between a basset hound and german shepherd - believe it or not one of the local frat houses had the male version of the same cross breed.

If the hounds are not walking today ... they are sleeping. The hot muggy weather arrived today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.