All The Hounds Enjoy Monday

You will have to excuse the 'lived in' look as I have been lagging on my housekeeping inside. I wanted to show what Heidi does most of the time not only during the freezing cold days in the winter but those summer days where the temps are above 80*, if not 75°. Any ideas on cleaning a leather couch of that size?

I had barely taken my regular second photo from the corner of the house, then setting my Garmin VivaSmart to monitor time and distance for the walk ... when I glanced up and Sadie was in a full run starting her own walk. We had a later than normal start today but the shaded areas were still wet with heavy dew. The snow boots were worn again today. I like dry feet.

As I walked I glanced over at Stella and all things seemed normal.

Then she made an abrupt turn and I knew then ... this was going to be a long walk and since it was Monday, she may have had come up with a new routine.

After standing there for a few minutes I realized she was just looking for that perfect spot for the second time this morning to relieve herself. Without any words being said, once she was finished she started trotting in our direction.

Sadie was in the exploring mode, Stella had returned to her stubborn mode and never heard a word I said. Verbal herding was not working the first part of the walk. Luckily it was another nice morning although I could feel a little more heat than our Saturday morning walk. It was still be about 10°-15° cooler this afternoon compared to last week and that would be good enough.

Sadie was acting as if she had picked up a field mice ... not with her mouth but with her nose. With her tail slightly wagging and her nose moving from spot to spot, I was sure it was a mouse she had corralled.

After a lot of begging, pleading and promises of dog treats when we returned home ... I finally got Stella around that first turn. Once she did that she settled in on her pace and seemed pretty content on this walk this morning.

More proof that Sadie had 'cornered' a live field mouse.

Unlike Winston, she will never pick up a field mouse with her mouth ... Winston would especially after the field was cut.

The thing about Sadie is, you never have to call her ... she will always come running on her own to catch up with me.

I was barely able to slide the lens down to 18mm to catch this photo. The rubber grip has stretched on the lens and at times makes it hard to turn the lens quickly. Searching online I found the problem was not only a Tamron problem but it also happens to Nikon and Canon lenses.

Just as I turned away from Sadie ... Stella was heading north at a fairly good pace. She was attempting her escape.

I yelled "hey" real loud and I was surprised she stopped and gradually turn and walked over to join Sadie. But that doesn't mean that she would keep walking as I walked the path. Oh no ... not Stella.

I had made the final turn toward home and when I glanced back both Sadie and Stella were way behind me next to the path ... I had to walk all the way back to Stella to explain to her the benefits of heading home with me, without further delay.  LOL

Both hounds decide on the way back if we follow the normal route at the "Y" or take the alternate route home. This morning Stella followed the alternate path.

I should have kept her in front of me, but she walks so slow that I have to pass her ... today that was a mistake. You remember this is a new week, it's Monday and soon into the walk Stella was showing me she has new plans starting today. She attempted one escape in the back of the field ...

I don't think I had walked more than 30', when I glanced back at Stella and she was already heading to the woods behind the neighbors house. Once again I yelled 'hey' loudly and she slowly turned our direction. It took a while but she finally stepped into the yard a few minutes later as Sadie and I waited at the corner property pole.

This is one reason I have a hard time to keep the moles out of my yard. Out in the field near the brush line I saw fresh mole activity. Now this is pretty far away from the yard but there were two to three spots like this in he field.

So it was not a surprise as Sadie and I stood in the north part of the yard waiting for Stella that I saw new mole activity in my yard. In March I spread some grub worm killer I had found in the shed and did the whole yard. It did a very good job so far this summer keeping the moles completely away. I might have to apply another small bag of the grub worm killer right before the next rain.

All of the hounds let me know by 12:30pm that I was a little off in my prediction of late afternoon hitting only the mid-80's. While Heidi stood there as her inner thermometer gauged the real temperature, Sadie and Stella had not moved off the driveway.

When I drove over to the recycling center this morning have of those miles to and from are on highways or country roads cutting through corn or soybean fields. With all the rain we had this spring and the perfect planting the farmers did with rain flooding out their crops ... it looks like a stellar year for the low farmers harvest in the fall. Every field I have seen locally has the perfect look to it.

While I walked around looking for any signs that my weed killer was starting to work, with rumors that might take weeks, Stella decided it was a perfect time for one of her short after lunch naps. Even Heidi had moved over to her favorite spot, a place that she will sit when I let her out alone when she goes to the door. It is really nice to have three hounds that don't wander off most of the time. Heidi never does, of course you know Stella's background and there are just a few times that Sadie will but that will be in the field or woods.

This is the look or one of the looks of a content basset hound.

The sky seems so blue when the clouds are large and puffy ... I guess I should have cut out that electrical wire from the photo.

Sadie wanted a walk but knew it was too soon after lunch. She can tell it's pretty hot by her open mouth but hardly any panting. As I stood talking to her I could feel that it sure felt like 90°.

I decided it was the perfect time to cut the toenails of all three hounds so I headed inside to grab the nail clippers. One step back outside and all three hounds were standing in front of the step wanting back inside ... the plan to cut toenails had been delayed. I hate cutting them inside even with a great vacuum.

Stella is due for a bath. Luckily she loves having the water run over her ... Sadie sprints away all over the house until I give up. So I have had to trick her in the past to go for a ride, then have the groomer do the job. It's nice now that there is a dog groomer at the vet we use.

With most things finished outside and the temperature too hot to do much, I migrated back inside the air conditioned room to clean the house and then start a new book. I am feeling it's going to be biography's for a while and they are all on my bookshelf here at home.

It was the normal routine this afternoon while the hounds slept I watched a tape copy of the Tour de France Stage 3 and the F1 race that was on Sunday. The DVR was on of the best inventions ever, right behind Gorilla Glue.

We are headed out for our 2nd walk of the day and those are always without the camera and Stella on a leash. That is because it is usually to hot to let her roam at her on pace. She doesn't mind the retractable leash and still has 25' to veer off the path.

Reds baseball tonight, maybe a movie, or reading my book.

No matter what, it was a great day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Take A Day Off

It was another nice day today, with the morning walk taken in 71° weather and a slight cool breeze from the south. The big difference was, my feet were dry during and after the walk, in a field that had heavy rain-like dew in the shaded areas. How did that happen? I wore my North Face snow boots again, just like last summer. Stella was so excited about walking this morning she was the first one out the door with a big nose to nose race between her and Sadie, on who would be first outside.

With the sun reflection this morning different than yesterday's late afternoon, I had a better view of the mowed yard. I couldn't help but post this photo this morning after admiring the change a sharp blade made yesterday. July brown is the lawn color of many houses here locally. We do not have a water shortage, nor is it expense to use water but I don't see a lot of people that water their lawns like I have in the past. I have not watered my yard in years and doubt that I do this summer.

As Stella stepped into the field ahead of me I was happy I made the choice that I did in footwear. As of this morning there is no need to look for another pair of cheap rain boots that are low cut, not the ones that are knee high. The snow boots will do the job and it's only a 15 minute walk at the most. There is no other time in yard work that I get my feet wet.

Sadie was back in her routine of exploring scent during her walk instead of eating, like yesterday.

Stella was also back in her old routine of ignoring anything verbal and wandering with no specific plan in place. I wish I could be as laidback as she is. It took a lot of verbal herding of her today to finish the morning walk. There were even three separate times I had to backtrack and just the touch of her collar got her to move in our direction. Much like the mother I saw the other day in Walmart with her young child ... but there no collar was involved.

I am sure the gardening and plant experts can name this as soon as they see it. I can't. If a name or a plant is related to sports then I am pretty quick recognizing something. Otherwise my memory sucks on plant names, song names, shopping lists and what I had for breakfast yesterday.

Stella followed her path slowly angling towards Sadie and I. She seemed to be feeling pretty good today as I witnessed a little more energy from her this morning. Of course when you compare her speed this morning against 'slow motion' I guess anyone or any hound would look energized.  LOL

Sadie heard nothing, saw nothing, tasted nothing ... only smells were her focus this morning.

As soon as she gets back inside after these morning walks, she sleeps soundly all the way until lunch is served. Where was Heidi this morning on such a nice day .... stretched out on the couch snoring.

Thanks to a couple of comments yesterday, I left my camera setting at 'auto no flash' and will keep it there. Now my brain is searching the difference in distance .. this was taken at 135mm. I wonder how long these rolls of hay will stay here? Obviously they don't need the hay until this winter, but they usually have it picked up within a month of baling it. Not this year.

As we made the first turn this morning, the air was full of birds singing. No butterflies were seen and that beagle we saw yesterday was nowhere on the horizon ... I kept looking for it just in case.

I've never been able to get rid of those 'elephant skin' patches you see on Stella. Different creams have been tried, all the creams were for canines only.

Unlike yesterday, at this point of the morning walk, I had nothing in my mind for today's plan. When you are retired you really don't need a plan but what it showed me, that brief one day slap in the face motivation had vanished as fast as it appeared yesterday. Unless I want to drive to Bloomington to pick up a new turntable, I didn't get anything done besides watching the Reds game in Chicago this afternoon.

Turntable???? Did I say a turntable??? Yes I did. At 34 years old, with a new belt, that old LP vinyl record was sounding great the other day as it streamed through my brand new Yamaha receiver. Then a strange noise ...  then a screeching noise!!! I knew something major had happened. With my small camping LED flashlight I was able to find the cause. When a stylus is that old, plastic ages and breaks. The stylus needle had broken off from the cartridge.

After spending a few days online searching for a stylus replacement and then a cartridge replacement, I was finding that the replacements suggested of course were priced high, throw in some shipping cost and I was approaching the cost of a new turntable ... that was a MODERN turntable ... they now connect a USB cord to your computer so you an download songs from a vinyl LP into an MP3 file. Pretty amazing.

So yesterday morning, or was it Friday morning ? ... I started going through all of my vinyl records to see how many were duplicated when I bought a CD years ago. I wanted to double check on whether I really needed a turntable or not.  Luckily I did not have to go through the whole collection. Halfway through the first handful of albums, almost every album I looked at was not on cassette tape nor CD ... "case closed" I'll get a new turntable. Those LPs that I did see I wanted to play again. {By late afternoon I had almost decided to not buy a turntable but to take that same money and purchase those albums that were only on vinyl, electronically or on a CD. I may rethink that option whether to spend money on something that may not be used a lot.}

It was about this same spot yesterday that I saw a glimpse of something up ahead by the edge of the field, not knowing if it was a rabbit or a small dog. I double checked this morning to see if the beagle had come back but not really expecting to see it. I had a feeling it was just visiting neighborhood yesterday.

I am not sure how many of you have dogs. Nor do I know if you take your dogs for walks off leash, giving them total freedom, but this is a fine example of a bloodhound being stubborn, just as their AKC description states. It is also shows it was one of three times I had to walk back to 'start' to grab her collar to get her to move in our direction. Some times Stella was start walking our direction once she sees me walking towards her. Sadie is standing right behind me when I took this photo ... also waiting.

I like this view of the field ... it is a good way to show what kind of day to expect ... minus high temperature readings. It won't be long before all those green leaves will be different colors.

Looking at the treeline of the Mahogany trees behind the house as I walked back home, I noticed a section that did not have leaves this year. I wonder why? That is just not one Mahogany tree like my friend thought it was a few years ago but a group of small ones. As I type this I am following that leafless tree limb down toward the bottom of the photo and know it's a single limb a few feet away from the others ... and I remember it was like this last summer also. It looks healthy.

This section is to the north of the front yard on the field side of the property line. I know why these trees look like they do. It was a couple of years ago when I decided to burn all the dead leaves and brush that had collected over many years between the saplings on the north side of the yard. The flames were high enough to shoot up into those trees and was so big that a car passing by on the highway decided they would call the fire department for me. He didn't know that I had things under control. It didn't take long for the local volunteer fire department to put my fire out. Like the bank on the opposite side, the bare ground from burning brought back that same wild growth 3x as thick.

I have said it before but I need a chair up in this area. To me this is the best part of the yard. A good 10° cooler even in the hottest days of summer. That single tree in the center of the photo is the tree that has no leaves. It is not a problem mowing and trimming the grass around it but maybe I should cut it down to ground level.

With the mower raised back up one notch to a 3" cut I will be able to miss a week in my mowing schedule. We are looking at a couple of days it might rain but in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, those forecasts can change within 5 minutes.

The afternoon turned out to be a pretty lazy day. I watched the Reds game until 5:15pm when Sadie couldn't wait any longer for her her afternoon walk. A little too hot for me but we took off anyway as the Reds game looked like it was going into extra innings.

I had planned for some afternoon photos but the hounds had other ideas. While they were outside after lunch I was pouring a new 40lb bag of dog food into the sealed storage container. I grabbed the camera expecting that Heidi might be sunbathing in the front yard while the bloodhounds roamed the field.

How wrong I was ... all three were standing at the door wanting back inside. Within 5 minutes ... all three hounds had chosen their afternoon napping spots and were sound asleep. So with a little free time until the baseball game I installed Firefox Quantum on my laptop, imported all the current bookmarks and did the latest updates to Firefox. Now that I have blocked autoplay for videos, I really like using that browser. It has the security of Safari and the features of Google Chrome.

The suns reflection told me the Z4 needs washed. With the rain no longer in the 5 day forecast I'll wash it in the morning and then do a little weed pulling in front.

It turned out to be a pretty lazy Sunday, not really a surprise after all the work I did outside yesterday. I have a tape of the IndyCar race today in Iowa and the 2nd Stage of the Tour de France to watch tonight.

Otherwise the weather was beautiful again today here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

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.