The Hawthorn is flowering profusely all around us. 
I tried to bring a few branches in the RV but the smell is quite unpleasant, faintly reminding of cat-pee, and it gave me a headache as well so it's sitting prettily on the picnic table outside now.

This idyllic scene in one of the neighbor's meadows is what living 'rural' is all about, a big red barn, a nice green pasture and a hole bunch of the cutest new calves:

This is cattle farming as it used to be, and still should be, the calves staying with their mamas and daddy peacefully grazing amongst them ...                                                                 




These lilacs are growing wild along the road and since they've never been pruned their flowers are high up in the air, packing quite a punch against that blue sky ...

                                                

I used my zoom to figure out what was fluttering around the flowers and found dozens of butterflies getting drunk on the nectar. No wonder they flutter so erratic! 

It's highly effective at evading predators though .. so hey, whatever it takes, drunk or not, it works.

                                                                   

The weather has been nice all week with temperatures in the low 70s, but today was truly one for the books!
And although we didn't get up to the 87F(30C) here, like they'd predicted, we clocked in at a respectable 82F(28F)!

Time for a nice big breakfast (Grand Slam) on the BBQ!

 

Chef James made some delicious blueberry pancakes, crispy bacon and perfect sunny-side up eggs!

Isn't that crazy? Breakfast outside (at about 9am) on May 3d?!

James had taken the AC covers off yesterday which was perfect timing because in the afternoon the temp inside went over 80F which means (for us) ... turn that AC on!
And although we could have had dinner outside we were so comfortable inside that we totally forgot about it! Next time ..

I'd bought some strawberry starters so I planted those out and I placed the plant boxes on a little table I remembered we had in the shed. 
Reason being ... those cute little chipmunks, remember the little ^%#@%! buggers from a previous post ... have been digging in my planters, bringing up all my newly sowed seeds!
I'd already added bird netting around the caches, which only took them one night to chew right through, but I hope by elevating them they won't be able to get in.

I placed those two planters in the foreground, where my tomatoes will go, on some upside down pots for the same reason. We'll see ...

                                           

                                          

These herbs, sage, rosemary and curly parsley, have been doing fine all winter and are starting to make new leaves ... so weird, some things won't grow at all and others go gangbusters! I'll never figure it out!

And look who is back!

They're already getting loud at night! 
Fortunately I'm deaf and James uses earplugs but sjeez .. isn't nature wonderful?

Talking about being deaf ... these arrived for me this week:

                                         

I'd been to the optometrist 2 weeks ago for a hearing test and consultations and surprise, surprise, I'm moderately deaf.
No surprise there because I'd noticed that myself already for a long while, but now medicare has kicked in my insurance will pay for part of them, so it was time to get some 'real' ones instead of the cheap OTC aids I'd bought from Temu.
(And yes, I bought some better ones secondhand from E-bay 2 years ago, Eargos, but they've died since than.)

Any-who, after extensive research, I bought hearing aids from the two different brands I think will be the best for me and will test them both.
They both have a 40 day free test-period after which you can return them for a full refund so hopefully that will work. Well see ... 

                                                                                                     
Time for a day at the beach! 

                                     

And this is why!


 

Yes, I turned 65 yesterday! OMG, can you believe it ? Sixty-five!
I'm old! I'm a dinosaur!
James gave me that card ... jeez, hon' .. just rub it in, will ye!

               

My mum send me those two puzzles. They look like fun! Paris and what looks like a terrace somewhere in the Mediterranean .. one of these days, I'll go back there!

But for now we went to the beach, just south of Lincoln City, a small area called Taft.
Of course we brought coffee and of course there was cake! 
Two humongous slices of real Birthday-cake this year!

       

I usually bake some kind of a pie but this year I treated myself by not having to do a thing.
James made breakfast and the pie was made by Target! 

It was overcast but not cold and we found ourselves a nice peace of driftwood to sit on.
The view was the best. How I miss the ocean ...

After eating waayyyy to much cream, we went for a few short hikes at various nearby developed trails which allow several routes of discovery throughout the wetlands around the bay. 

                                  

These wetlands consist of rich tidal marshes, mudflats and spruce-hardwood swamps which are crucial habitats for salmon, migratory waterfowl, and wading birds.

     

Salmon berry and Red Elderberry

           

These were all very nice, easy walks. We didn't see a lot of wildlife but we spotted quite some spring-flowers and shrubs.

Getting hungry we drove back to the bay and had a late lunch at Mo's Seafood and Chowder, a well-known Fish restaurant here in Oregon which opened in 1948 and is famous for it's clam chowder.

It offers beautiful views of the Siletz Bay and the Pacific Ocean, especially if you can grab a seat at the window like we did:

                                                            

Of course we had the chowder as well as rock-fish tacos, coleslaw with bay-shrimp and I splurged on an oyster shooter with hot sauce!

                        

Afterwards, while we were in the neighborhood, we decided to drive inland a bit, following the Siletz River, and check out a few RV Parks.

Although we're not really looking to move right now, and if we were, we would probably not go into an RV Park again, but who knows, we might be interested in buying property here in the future. It's such a beautiful area:

It's a beautiful area with lots of plant and wildlife, while the river contains the greatest diversity in fish species on the Oregon Coast, as it contains all types of salmon species, as well as white sturgeon!

We came across a small herd of Roosevelt Elk:

The campgrounds were all quite nice, all of them had beautiful river views, but what we didn't quite realize, or forgot about, is the fact that the problem with the river that close means that most of them flood during the winter!
No wonder that many of the houses we saw along the road were built high on stilts!

I guess we'll have to re-think about this living-at-the-river plan ... we've been through several floods when we lived in Louisiana and we'd rather not go through that again.

The rest of the week went by rather uneventful as usual.
The weather has been quite nice with temps in the sixties and mostly dry except for a little rain on Tuesday.
According to our landlord it's already getting too dry out there again. Not good for his newly planted Christmas trees!

     

'My' wild birds, like these House Finches, are looking a bit more colorful these days. 
It's a natural 'thing', all to impress the ladies!

I've seen some Goldfinches come by to check out the feeders but I didn't have their favorite seeds out yet so they quickly moved on.
I hope they'll be back because I since than brought out the Thistle seed, their food of choice.

This pair of ducks sort of live at the pond and often look for spills underneath the feeders.
I guess they enjoy seeds as well .. 

                                     

And I finally finished this puzzle. For some reason it took me a while although it's not a particular difficult one.
I just didn't feel like puzzling much as of lately:

I'm not reading a lot either, none of the books I started have been of much interest to me ..  
It might be the weather as well, too cold to start all kind of summer things and too warm to stay inside all the time.
Oh well, I usually just give in to being sort of bored, it kinda serves a purpose as well and I know it will change again ...
This is what Google has to say about it:

Yes, boredom has a significant purpose : it acts as a functional signal that prompts the brain to seek new goals, enhances creativity, and drives personal development. It moves our minds away from overstimulation, activating the the default mode network to encourage self-reflection, creative thinking, and problem-solving. 

There you go ... what he says!

'Aprilletje zoet geeft ook nog weleens een witte hoed'

This dutch saying translates to a little rhyme which means: “little April sweet sometimes has a white hat” (of course this rhymes in dutch but not in English).
The white hat is a metaphor for snowfall, although in this case it was hail and good size hail at that!

                                           

'Unfortunately', nowadays it happens only rarely. 
It is clear that temperatures continue to rise. Until the year 2000, there fell snow on two to four days in April but since then, that has become much less frequent. 

Apparently Mama Osprey survived the onslaught of this cold front and still sits bravely on her eggs (I presume) on top of her telephone-pole perched nest:

 

It was a busy Saturday again at the pond, lots of families trying to catch one of the legal-size, and sometimes larger "jumbo"or brood, rainbow trouts the Oregon Department Department of Fish & Wildlife stocks the pond with in early Spring.

Not too many birds are around on these busier days but I found a few I hadn't seen for a while, like this Wigeon:

     

     
                          And a few Common Mergansers ..

My bird-feeders back home are wildly popular, there's a whole flock of White Crowned sparrows and House Finches watching my every move in the morning when I walk around the RV to fill them.

                                                            

They're mostly waiting for me to scatter a few handfuls in the border and grass around the feeders which makes for much easier picking of course, especially for the Mourning Doves who cannot manage to hang from feeders.

And yes, these cheeky (literary) Chipmunks have caught on as well and hoover around the grounds trying to stuff as many seeds in their cheeks as fast as possible!

Yes, I see you!

So yes, besides that sudden hail-shower, which lasted only 10 minutes of so, the weather has been fairly good. The wind makes a lot of difference from day to day since when it blows it can be rather cold and when not it's quite pleasant.
Yesterday the temps reached almost 70F and today it's going to be even warmer!

But just so we won't get too excited about it all, the forecast is for 4 rainy days in a row, so ha .. Oregon is not done yet!

 

Here's a Variegated FritillaryButterfly just to show warmer days will be coming .. 
... eventually.

Only one more week until my Birthday. How on earth did that happen?