Although it has gotten a little cooler again this last week we still continue to have reasonably good, and most importantly dry, weather!

That Clematis up above is in it's third year now, and after having no flowers at all in it's first and only one last year, it opened five enormous, beautiful flowers last week!
It badly needs re-potting but I'll wait until it's done flowering. I'm too scared I'll kill it now!

                              

We've been extremely busy all week! We cleaned the outside of the RV (well, James did) the car and even the truck got a thorough once-over.
Living in Oregon, especially during the winter, makes everything end up looking green around the edges, compliments of the rapid growing mold!

            

James worked a little on covering up some ugly pipes ..

He also replaced the screen of our front screen-door, which Merlin had sharpened his nails on a little too often and was starting to let mosquitos in.
He decided to spray-painted the door as well since it showed a lot of scratches and busted off paint:

    

                           

And while he was at it, he also painted the door-frame .. why not .. It looks amazing, like a new door!

To celebrate all the clean- and tidy-ness with some extra color I bought a couple of hanging baskets to hang from the front awning:

As every year I'd balked at the high prices for them, but look what I found in the 'sale' corner at Walmart:

                                                     

Now that's more like it! I had to clean them up a little, pinch off the spent flowers and brown leaves (I suspect they weren't watered enough), but they spruced up real nice and I see little leaf and flower buds everywhere! Score!!

Here's a few wild-flowers I came across on my walk:

      

These are Cat’s Ear’s or Furry Mariposa.
I'd never seen them before, aren't they pretty? Apparently they grow from bulbs. I might go back later this year to see if I can dig a few up ..

     

And I think these are called 'Golden Alexander' or Zizia Aurea if you want to get all fancy about it. Not that they are very fancy at all, they're very common, ordinary wildflowers here in the Pacific North-west.

Not too many 'new' birds this week as well. Just some ordinary 'birds on a wire' .. like this Scrub Jay:

And a little Tree Swallow, preening his feathers:

 

Some say birds on a telephone wire predict the coming of rain. I know they often stop flying to wait out bad weather, but there wasn't any storm coming in either so who knows.

Google says "The electric current flowing through the wires makes them a tad warmer than the surrounding air. When the bird sits on the power line, it feels the heat on its two feet, helping it warm up."
I guess they're getting a little buzz out of it .. sort of a bird's 'crack'!


 

Last but not least .. the office is pretty much done!
The wallpaper is up:

              

 

And some of the office equipment is in!

I must say .. it's a very pretty office!

Which is not a minute too early because we really needed that office to be done by now.
Reason being: my sister, and her partner in crime, are coming for a visit next week and we need the space to use as an extra bedroom!
In fact they'll be staying in the RV and James and I are going to sleep in the office and with the office now out of the RV, James will still be able to get some work done as well while they're here.

We're so excited! My sister has visited once, while we still lived in California, but never since, so it will be nice to show them some of Oregon.

They'll be staying for 3 weeks so plenty of time! I can't wait!