A Hounds Lifestyle Is The Best

Wednesday was a full day outside doing some yard work and cutting the giant ragweed on the corner of the field.

I also cut some small stumps down to ground level in preparation of planting grass seed on the bank by the old fence post in the backyard.

Of coarse I had Sadie and Stella supervising and inspecting my work. By 5pm I have to admit I was tired from that activity, with no energy nor interest in blogging last night. With the MLB playoff game not starting until 8pm, the bloodhounds and I took of on our 3rd walk of the day, for the 2nd day in a row.

This morning we woke up to another beautiful day. It was early but I could hear a combine off in the distance and figured the corn field that is between the field we walk in and the turkey farm, was harvesting their corn.

As we were coming inside after our first trip of the day, I noticed someone was trying out my chair. It didn't move the whole time I was snapping pictures. I am not sure why they are not sharp and crisp ... maybe my hands shake a little in the morning.

Sadie is getting use to the 3 walks per day ... a new habit. By 9:30am she was begging to go outside where she will stand and stare at me to let me know she wants to take a walk. Stella is only demanding when it's time to eat but will follow us once the walk starts.

I know it's early but from what little changes in leaf color I see, I don't feel we will be seeing the really bright colors. I'll have to read and find out what makes them that bright colorful leaf, where other years they turn into dull colors.

With the field cut, Stella is getting her running in everyday and sometimes twice per day. She loves to run.

I knew when both of them took off running around the first corner, with no deer in sight, they were anxious to get to the spots were deer spend time. Lately you can barely pry them away from the spots they find.

Stella either hears me and ignores me telling her to "come on" or is just oblivious to the outside world once she has started eating her added protein meal.

I now have to walk over to her to give her nudge to get going. She's never happy when I make her leave those spots.

Sadie is not as intense but will follow the beaten down path that the deer have made through the tall grass. Just to the right of her is a deep gully full of wild overgrown weeds and flowers.

I was right about hearing a combine this morning. You can see where they have picked the corn with a lot more to go. For any readers with a farming background and I know there are a few ... my question is, why isn't this combine cutting the corn close to the ground? I see in other blogs where the stalks are cut almost to ground level, whereas this farmer is not cutting that low.

This next photo was taken on our 2nd walk of the day just a couple of hours later. You can see the dust almost blocking the view of the combine. That dust is one reason I will wait to power wash my house until the two fields in front of my house and across the highway are harvested. I usually power wash the house in the spring but I missed doing that this year ... not sure why.

The leaves are changing color and someway this red leaf made it out to the center of the field.

On the way back home on our 2nd walk today, Stella's tongue is letting me know the temperature is above 80°. She was right ... Wunderground told me it was 82° when we got back to the house.

We only have one more day of 80° weather and then the highs will be in the low to mid 70's. It's a perfect time of year to be living in the Midwest. Speaking of weather I have some family and friends on the east coast of Florida. My cousin lives within a block of the ocean, has been through a few bad hurricanes without much damage over the years but this one might be different.

A few friends I have not been able to get a hold of and without them posting on Facebook I assume they are on their way out of town. One friend has decided to stay and party with her neighbors and ride out the storm. That seems to be the common theme for some, even with millions of people evacuating.

There are very few places in the USA that does not have some type of natural disaster ... from forest fires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

I headed out for a trip to buy groceries and once again Stella did not do any damage to the bedroom while I was gone. I was gone over an hour. Can I assume she is finally over her separation anxiety? Last week I was gone for 8-9 hours, she passed that test with flying colors. The last time she destroyed anything was June 24 ... that doesn't include the fruit that she steals from the bowl on the counter while I am outside mowing the yard.

It's already Thursday and with the MLB Playoffs added to my College and NFL football viewing ... once again I do not have enough tv's to watch all the games I want to watch, which are scheduled at the same time.

That's all for today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Pass Out By 3pm

Unless you were here it would be too hard to understand just how beautiful every day is this time of year in 'the tropics'.

No heat, no humidity, windows open 24/7, any rain forecasted never arrives ... it's great.


We had a fairly late start I guess. I am not sure why but really didn't realize the time until I was making coffee. It didn't feel that late. Even with that, Stella decided it was too wet for the first walk of the day and headed back to the house soon after her visit to the field. She was wanting to sleep a little longer.

From the time it took me to consume my daily two cups of coffee, read my email, some blogs, sports and little news it looked like the perfect time to take that first walk of the day even with it being an hour or so before lunch.

Both hounds were happy as usual. Stella did her best to keep up with Sadie and I and didn't lag far behind like she has recently.

They both found their favorite stuff to eat in the same spots as before.

It looks like the corn crop in the field behind the field we walk in, is more than ready to be picked. I would think that would happen sometime this week with all the great weather predicted.

By the time we got back from walk #1, Heidi had moved from the front yard to the backyard which has more direct sunshine before noon. That huge pipe sticking out of the ground is the capped off well from 40 years ago. The story is, they tried using their own well water but switched to 'city water' soon after. I don't know if that change was because of water quality from their well or the availability of 'city water'.

As I was messing around outside for an hour or so, Sadie kept bothering me like she wanted another walk. She gives you that stare down when she wants to go or will hop up and down if she thinks we are going for a walk. Yet, it was barely over an hour since they finished their first walk.

I stalled her for another hour inside before I decided if that is what she wants to do, then we'll do it. They were more than happy to take off. Heidi was barking and that seemed to tell me she wanted to go also ... but all she wanted was to go outside.

The walk was a little faster paced. The hounds didn't hang out in anyone spot like the photo above. Then something I had not seen on any walk in the 19 years that I have been here.

On the way back Sadie takes of sprinting and never stopped.

She did stop though and from the way she was acting I thought Heidi had come out into the field and Sadie had seen her wagging white tip on her tail ... but there was nothing there by the time we caught up with Sadie.

It wasn't Heidi because when we got back to the yard, Heidi was back over in that same spot she was at this morning, soaking up some sunshine.

Sometime around lunch I had a wild thought ... "why am I paying them for something that has to have a simple solution?". I went back to the local hardware store to pick up my weed eater, along with a new dry filter to go along with my new spark plug I bought yesterday. I even mixed up a new batch of gas/oil mixture they recommend.

My weed eater was behind a long line of riding mowers in for repair. I could see why they told me it would take a couple of days.

After draining all of the fuel, pressing the bubble to release as much fuel as possible and getting it empty as possible, I tried starting it ... I think you can see by Stella's response what happened ... nothing.

She proceeded to walk over and give herself a good scratch in one of her outdoor napping spots but today ... that wasn't the spot she wanted.

After a little thinking, she decided she had to move if she was going to sleep outside this afternoon. Why not? She and Sadie had two walks completed by 1:30pm, the yard mowing could wait until tomorrow, she was fed and had nothing else planned for the rest of the day.

After finding a better spot with more hot sunshine, she looked back for my approval ... then started her thought process for starting her nap.

In the meantime my bloodhound that has the strong tracking chip inside her, was exploring different parts of the yard nonstop while Stella slept. If Sadie is outside she never has time to take a nap ... there are too many things to check out.

After Sadie practically walked over the top of Stella, waking her up ... Stella decided that sleeping inside may be a little safer around Sadie.

All three hounds were passed out by 3pm ... I wasn't certain a 3rd walk for the day would take place. We have NEVER done 3 walks in a day and it might not be something I want to introduce to them, to prevent any new habits taking place.

I played around with my two camera lenses. You can look through the photos and see if you can see any differences in them. Some are taken with the Tamron 18-200mm with a lens hood. Others were taken with my Nikon 55-200mm with a filter and a lens hood.

With these hounds passed out in the middle of the afternoon and Sadie snoring loudly, at times it's really hard to resist an afternoon siesta in the late afternoon.

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

Sadie Finds A Praying Mantis

With the AC turned off and all the windows opened, it felt like fall. I'm not sure where September went but it wasn't here long enough to remember.

Doesn't it seem like it was hot summer summer weather just a couple of weeks ago? Today the weather was great to get a few things done outside before it rains again.

Cleaning gutters was one of my projects today. With a lot of dry leaves inside them and not having the wet leaf problem it made the job that much faster ... and cleaner to do. I am hoping to clean and wash the Toyota FJ this week also. A lot of hound wear inside that needs to be taken care of.

Right after lunch it was time for a walk. It was beautiful today and most of the afternoon was spent outside doing something. You can see the leaves just starting to change color.

I bought a new spark plug for the Echo SRM-225U Weed Eater ... it still didn't start. I drove down to the local hardware store where I bought it to let them take a look at it. Their repair business must be good because they said they'd call me in a couple of days. I was tired of trying to figure out what was wrong with it and decided to let the 'pros' fix it. That also delayed the cutting of the giant ragweed until I get that back.

Sadie and Stella didn't care though. They took off running along the edge of the field and and didn't stop until they moved around the first turn. The scents must have been pretty strong for them to take off like that.

Of coarse Stella found her usual spot that she is always interested in.

Sadie was in full search mode and had been most of the walk today.

I'm not sure what spooked Stella but I caught her just as she turned, right before she took off running to catch up with us.

We headed back to the house but you can see that Sadie is very interested in something she had found. Once I saw her hop into the air right above that spot she is checking out, I knew it was something important.

If you look closely you can see what her prize was. I ran Sadie off to let the praying mantis continue it's movement through the field.

Sorry to be brief tonight, but the hounds and I just got up from our afternoon siesta a little after 6pm and still have a little daylight we can enjoy before the sun sets. For those interested, all the photos today were taken with the lens hood mounted.

It was a good Monday here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.