Hounds Hibernate In Cool Temps

Strange weather has hit 'the tropics' this morning and WeatherBug forecast for the next three days shows it's going to get even colder.

The rain finally stopped but the temps dropped low enough last night that woke me up. I had to shut the windows, then finding out a few minutes later it was 4:13am.

Consequently the hounds, all three of them, feel it's fall and not spring so they have gone into their hibernation mode so far today. They think winter is on the way.

Their first trip of the day is never long because they are more interested in eating their breakfast. They have figured out that while they are outside peeing I am inside pouring out their kibble for breakfast. Stella at times never leaves for the yard and stands at the door waiting to come back inside.

Their 2nd trip is usually an hour later or when I get up to get my 2nd cup of coffee. They usually roam but not today ... just out long enough to dump their tanks and head back inside.

I had two more photos of Sadie running toward the house but they were so blurry they were not worth posting them for public viewing. Was I shaking that bad?

So with my first post of the day I don't have a lot going on. It's borderline whether to leave the windows open or not since the high today might be 62°. A few days later it's not suppose to get out of the high 50's. That's too cold for me but I do remember past Indy500 races at the end of May being run in temps that cold.

I ran onto my list from last April .. "Moving To Do List" and saw all of the items I had put a black mark through when I finished them. I had a heck of a list last spring with some items as "had to do". This year, nothing ... just general house/yard maintenance or what I call upkeep. Nothing is serious.

It did remind me of the land clearing I did in April, so I thought you might like to see some photos of that process if you were not around last year. A few years ago I had a friend bring his Bush Hog over and clear out all of the overgrowth, thinking I was going to set it up as a camping spot.

2011

Yes, this is the spot where that old fence post that has the hanging roll of barbed wire is but very well hidden inside all of the overgrowth.

The problem was, my procrastination got in the way ... plus a full time work schedule as I had not retired yet ... so all that my friend cut, grew back.

Finally last April 2015 I was motivated enough to do what I had planned five years ago ... clear it out with some chairs and a fire pit. It would even be a place to pitch the tent and do some local camping.

So the first step was to burn all of it to the ground. Then with a garden rake I pulled up as many of the buried roots and vines as possible, burning those also. Here is my post from last year, with more photos and more description of what I did.

I did not do the professional job of planting grass and covering it with straw ... I did it the lazy way by filling my spreader with grass seed and decided to let mother nature take it's coarse in having the grass over take the weeds that would try to grow back.

Last year

This year

The grass has filled in as well as I hoped it would. I can still reseed some of the area next fall. I still need to make a fire pit, add some chairs ... I hate mowing around stuff like chairs ... LOL.

Well Stella just walked in and laid her wet jowls on my forearm whining for lunch ... about an hour early ... it's pretty lazy today for a Monday, hopefully the hounds and I can come up with something that has blog value by tonight ... that is always up in the air.

Fall weather here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Two New Posts Back To Back

It's out of the norm but I am posting two new posts back to back due to each of them having a different subject. The first one is below this post or over to the right sidebar it's titled "Took A Mid-Day Drive". 

Right after the FJ was parked and the driver's door opened, as I climbed out Heidi was right behind me and moved as fast as she could into the following position. I guess she didn't have enough room in the passenger seat to do that and may have been holding that scratch for quite a while.

I could tell by the temperature while letting all the hounds out of the FJ after our return, that the field might be dry enough to get a walk in before I started my afternoon sports marathon on tv. It was dry enough and off we went. Heidi stayed back inside to let the ointment do it's thing without taking the chance of getting it wet.

I believe the hay in the field is growing by the hour and pretty soon once the bloodhounds are off the path about the only way to see them will be their tails. When it got too high in the past, Winston use to boycott the walks and would stay back in the yard howling and barking as we walked away.

I glanced back at Stella and at first she was nowhere to be seen and had stepped into the wooded area ... that's out of bounds for her. When she heard her name she came out of the wooded area to walk along the edge like nothing had happened.

I'm glad to see some ribs on Sadie, that means her exercise 2x per day and portion control on the dog food is working. She still has a few pounds to lose.

What ever it was that caught their interest, Sadie took off trotting and immediately rolled in it. It worked out ok, it was nothing that needed to be wiped or washed off. With my upcoming televised sports this afternoon I did not have time to give a bloodhound a bath ... especially since I would have never gotten her in the tub. She hates baths worse than getting her nails cut.

She also acted like nothing was wrong when I called her ... everything was okay to her.

With it getting fairly warm, Sadie trotted for the house and headed straight to the water bowl.

In the meantime my afternoon ended with the Reds game tied in the bottom of the 9th while the NASCAR race had 11 laps to go, NHL playoff game was on NBC and the Formula 1 race had just started on NBCSN. I ended up taping the F1 race. I need a 2nd tv.

While it looked like the perfect day in weather, we had a severe thunderstorm blow through but passed just to the south of us. It was the only small storm on radar in the whole Midwest ... it ended up raining lightly here with the sun shining while Stella whined ... because there was thunder.

Sunsets are nice here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Took A Mid-Day Drive

While we waited for the grounds to dry out enough for a walk, I had the urge to take some photos of the local area. So we piled into the FJ. The hounds took their usual seats with a destination a few miles west where the land goes from hilly to nice and flat.

Even Heidi was ready for a little drive. She wagged her tail and trotted to the door when I asked if she wanted to go for a ride. That is rare for her. Sadie and Stella are a different story ... they want to go all the time. They never hesitate to jump in when the back door is open.

A little blurry on this next photo, but I was holding the camera up while driving, shooting blind and not knowing if I was even getting Heidi in the photo. I couldn't pass posting it even with the blurriness. She doesn't pose like that in the car often.

I think you can tell a difference right away from our drive in the middle of April. The farms are larger and the land is flatter. All of this is just a few miles west of us. With all the recent rain it was too wet to see anyone working their fields today. There was standing water in a lot of the fields we saw.

I was hoping those were snow capped mountains I was seeing behind those out buildings ... but they were just clouds, telling me I was still in the Midwest.

Like the movie Hoosiers ... yes, a lot of barns have basketball GOALS not RINGS (Ted Cruz) nearby. The local small school in this area is a combination of three different schools and has had numerous basketball players play for Indiana, Purdue and Butler at the D-1 level.

I was pretty sure where this road would end up, it was nice to get off the highway.

I like the design of this house, with the added brick for the porch foundation and the bottom of each post ... the decision was whether to crop out the dumpster but I wanted to keep as much of the house as possible.

Throughout the drive we saw a lot of these natural gas stations.

At least this line of train cars were parked but I have been stuck in traffic at the railroad crossing for this train that seemed to have gone on for miles.

With all the recent rain plus some this afternoon after these photos, their sprinkler system will not be used for a while.

Maybe next time I'll turn in and get some close up shots of airplanes at our local airport. Yes, I'm serious ... it's an airport.

Surprising but about this time I was shocked to hear both of my bloodhounds were whining. We were not even close to Dairy Queen nor any kind of bbq smells. I took that as they were wanting to cut the trip off short and head home.

So we did.