So I waited an hour.
I waited another hour.
It didn't change, it was still feeling like 22° but the morning was passing us by and we needed to get our first walk in for the day. With the bright sunny skies I had forgotten all about the rain yesterday. Luckily I had put on some other shoes besides the Nike's I wear almost all the time. The damp ground and heavy dew didn't bother me.
Yes, it's April 9th but that 22° number won over. I put on the Mountain Hardwear parka with a hood. I slipped on my left hand glove thinking I would leave my right hand free for the camera shutter button ... but these gloves were different than I wore before.
The rubber fingertips looked like they might work with the camera so I slipped on the right hand glove and tried taking a photo. It worked perfect. So I had my camera gloves all along and there was no need to make cutting modifications to the other pair of gloves I had wore.
There was little wind if any at all which made it much warmer as we stepped outside ... from the start Sadie and Stella were ahead of me and stayed way ahead of me unless they found something buried under the thick hay. As usual when they found something they ignored me.
They stopped briefly at the turn but not for long. When they took off sprinting I was sure they might take off outside the boundary of the field. I didn't know what they had found in their scent research but obviously it was strong enough to make them sprint to get there.
You can barely see Stella but she is just right of the center of the photo. I will scream, yell and sprint toward that direction if I ever see her disappear further into that brush and over the hill of the gully. Today was pretty close.
This morning wasn't for deer ... it was for birds that were either hiding in the deep grass or eating out in that field. On the very first trip outside this morning, Sadie flushed out a bird from the deep grass and both hounds were sprinting after it through the field, in the yard and all the way to the embankment on the south side of the property. The bird wasn't 6" off the ground the whole way.
Here is a fine example of ignoring me. In fact, Stella looked up and then took off for her 'no fly zone' while Sadie came sprinting to catch up with me. Once Stella saw Sadie was leaving her, she went into an all out sprint not to be left behind.
With different sprints throughout the walk, they were both ready to get back inside the warm (60°) house.
It looks like it's going to be an hour or so of hound maintenance today. That will be a 20 minute Epsom Salt soak for Heidi, then nail trimming for all of them. I hope that Sadie will be cooperative today, it's usually a fight for her to let me trim her nails.
I am not sure what started this blogging in the middle of the day just after our morning walks. Why couldn't it wait until early evening like before? I thought a little about blogging while we walked this morning and I think my posting twice per day most of the time now is because of the amount of photos I add to the post. Two post per day splits up the large number of photos I take during the day. Just a guess.
I've caught up reading all the blog updates for the RV side of the list. A couple of the retirement blogs are really interesting so with my morning coffee this morning I read a lot of their past posts.
Of course everyone writes different styles, different topics, but there is one thing consistent ... ALL of us have periods of time where we don't feel like writing, taking photos or whatever we blog about. Some of them stop and re-evaluate what their blog is about, like myself, because the direction has changed over the years. That seems to be pretty standard for all bloggers on both of my blogrolls.
I received my Indiana License Plate tags yesterday. They are the ones that I put over the previous year, a small decal, with the last two digits of the year in big font and the plate number in smaller fonts. I don't know who decides the color choices for these tags but they have to be the ugliest in the United States on a consistent basis. Orange decals with black letters do not go well with my Voodoo Blue FJ, nor with my plate on the Mini Cooper which has the state colors of blue and yellow. Ugly ... Ugly ... Ugly.
Major League Baseball back east and in the midwest continues to play their games in freezing temps, even some sleet last night in Cincinnati. Some games were called because of snow. Too bad they need to make all the money they do make, which means more games are needed to pay those outlandish salaries ... otherwise they could start later and end sooner, all in good baseball weather.
Well it's time to get Heidi's warm bath water ready. She doesn't mind it but that 20 minutes seems like a lifetime while I sit there to make sure she doesn't try to escape the tub.
Sunny skies makes it a beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.
