Camellia 'Debutante'

Due to the nice, almost spring-like, weather of late I'm starting to see little buds on some of the trees and shrubs, and the Camellia in Doug and Brenda's yard is already starting to flower. It's one of the earliest varieties but still!

Here and there a few tiny flowers are emerging in the green grass ..

I brought a few hazelnut branches inside the RV, and their catkins (male flower-buds) have grown rapidly and are shedding yellow pollen when you touch them.
I also dug up some daffodil bulbs from the yard and they've started to flower as well.

 

It makes it feel like spring a little bit already, although officially we still have another month to go off course. The forecast calls for frost next week, so we're not there yet!

Counting on the fact that people are starting to think and plan this year's vacations, the first RV shows of the year are starting to pop up, so, with nothing better to do, we went to the one in Salem, about a 45 minute drive to the south from us.

We hadn't been to one in 10 years and it was fun to see all the new models and beautiful and smart interiors.
Ours is starting to get a little tired around the edges, especially compared to all those new and shiny ones off course, and we've been thinking about maybe getting a newer one in the not so distant future.
We thought it would be great if we could have something like a separate office area, and wouldn't you know it .. they have those now! They're called second bedrooms, but of course you can use them for anything. Like this one for instance:

That room there at the top of the middle is the one I'm talking about.

It's hard to take a picture of this room but you can see the open door of the entrance there in the middle of the left picture below, and the inside of said room in the right picture: 

 

  Another concept we really like is one with a back/front raised living room. Like this one:

Look at that huge living area! Unfortunately these don't come with a separate second room but you could easily make some room in the living room somehow.

I'm not too impressed with the interiors but nothing that some paint, different fabrics and/or furniture and a carpet won't fix.
These new ones are of course waaayyyy to pricey for us, but who knows, we might find a reasonably priced second-hand one in a year or two. We'll see .. we're not in a hurry.

For our Wednesday dinner-night-out this week, we went to Ixtapa, a Mexican restaurant here in town.
Which turned out to be, although not the best, certainly the fastest dinner we had so far!
We were seated right away and before we had shed our coats and were sitting down we already had (warm) chips and (very hot) salsa in front of us!

 

The interior is a little dated with very colorful, typical Mexican artwork and of course the obligatory vibrant Mexican music, which I must say was a little too loud and much for me after a while.
After we'd made our choice and ordered, the food also arrived with super-speed!
It was very hot and a big portion, more than enough to split, but I thought it rather bland, it all tasted the same, and the Chili-relleno came sort of cooked inside egg-white instead of a fried egg-batter. Not very tasty ..

And like I said, everything went so fast, we were in and out in 45 minutes! Not much of an evening out ..
Oh well, it wasn't bad and filled us up, but I don't think we'll go back anytime soon.

I really don't have much else to talk about this time. I know, I say that every time, but really, I think that was all for now.
I could mention we're going a little more 'green' by buying launder-sheets, instead of those big plastic tubs of liquid, and show you a picure of how small the package is (and fully compostable) but how exiting is that?
OK than, just because I can:

                 How neat is that? I just hope they'll work ..