We've had a beautiful week of unusual sunny and warm weather. Already a little too hot for my liking actually!
Temperatures soared into the low 80s and we turned the AC's on for the first time this year!

                                                                        

Trees and shrubs are flowering everywhere!
We are surrounded by Hawthorns, which have nasty little thorns, but they have their short moment of glory in early Spring when they are absolutely beautiful!

                                                                         

  

Amidst all the white of the hawthorns there's the cheerful yellow of the Scotch Broom as well, considered a class B noxious weed in the US but 'native' in Western Oregon:




And here and there the first flowers of the wild Nootka roses, another native of the Pacific Northwest, are starting to open their sweet, almost cinnamon scented, flowers.

                                                       

      

They spread by suckers and I dug up a few from below the tree-line of the property and transferred them to my little pond-side wild-flower border.
I think I butchered quite a lot of roots in doing so, so we'll have to see if they'll survive ..

The Camas lilies are  flowering all around the ponds:

And look what showed up on one of those beautiful, sunny mornings?

Another surprising appearance was made by a couple of Acorn Woodpeckers!

                              

I used to see them all the time when we lived in the San Bernardino mountains in California but haven't come across them in all the 10 years we were traveling, or even here in Oregon since we've been here! 
They're very loud and obnoxious birds and there was no mistake in identifying them with that clown-faced color pattern.

While traipsing through the meadows I flushed out this pretty little butterfly:

It's a Fender’s blue butterfly, native to and found only in the Willamette Valley.
Once thought to be extinct but which has returned in strong numbers in the last couple of years!
Conservationists say the butterfly is an important pollinator in the Willamette Valley and that its return marks an improvement in prairie biodiversity and health.
Cool! 

Let's see, what else? I baked a, almost perfect, sourdough sandwich-bread:

I forgot to score the top so it burst a couple of 'rogue' cracks at the top but other than that it was a very good and tasty bread.
It definitely had that coveted sour 'tang' it should have.

                                                    

The office is looking more and more finished! James painted the ceiling an off-white and the walls (partly) and door a moss-green: 

   

The upper part of the walls above the counter and 2 of the side walls are going to be wallpapered with a rustic wooden plank pattern!

And of course now the weather is heating up we used the BBQ for some of our dinners this week 

Hamburgers (plant based) with potato salad and corn on the cob.
Summer is coming!