This interesting picture I made after the sun reemerged from behind some dark clouds coming through our area.
Feels almost a little 'twilight-zone' ..

We're already two months into summer .. man, how times flies!
Temperatures are still 'mild', in the high 70s, low 80s and maybe just maybe, we'll be getting some rain on Monday and Tuesday!
After 47 days of no (measurable) rain we could use a good soaker!

        

I sowed some sunflowers in my little green-house early this spring and none survived but it looks like the birds had more success than I did and are most likely responsible for these two 'wild' sunflowers showing up in the field next to us.

                                                                        

Or maybe the squirrels were the culprits.
They do bury a lot of their haul as well, which might be the cause of that sunflower coming up in the field ..
They mostly go for the spilled seeds below the bird-feeders but now and than one climbs in the pole to try his/her luck in stealing some from the source!
 

Fortunately so far these ground-squirrels are not raiding the feeders like the grey squirrels tend to do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

I tried out my new (to me) dehydrator this week:

   

It's a really simple method. You just spread out the thinly sliced fruit on the trays (not touching or overlapping), stack them on the base and plug in the cord.
Et voila! Dried fruit!

                               

The apple took 3 hours, the peach, strawberry and bananas 5 to 6.
I dried them until they were still somewhat soft/bendable, rather than really crisp, which is how we like them the best but I think I'll cut them a little thicker next time.
These came out very thin and didn't have much of a 'bite' to them. They tasted good though!

This morning we went to yet another garage sale, this one in Sheridan (the other village we live close to).


It was a rather disappointing event though.
There was no map so we just had to drive up and down the streets to find them and they were few and far between.
Still, I managed to find a few items, like this handy, dandy apple peeler which works as a slicer and corer as well:

                      

                      

 

And a few garden pots which I needed for some new plants I bought on sale at Walmart this week.
This pretty knock-out rose I got for $7 instead of the original price of $19.84. Score!

                

Other than that I got not much else to talk about for this week. Hopefully we get that rain they talk about, which comes with a little drop in temperatures as well.

(Personally, I would love some snow, but that might be wishful thinking ..)



Oh, I almost forgot .. the summer Olympics have started!
How about that incredible opening ceremony!

At times very weird and wacky but also very beautiful, awe-inspiring, exciting, uniting, all inclusive and absolutely memorable! And all that despite the pouring rain!

Well done Paris!

I'm going to watch a lot of it, hopefully they'll show some of the sports where the dutch are competing as well ..

♫) Jeremiah was a bullfrog,
               was a good friend of mine ♪ ...

                                             (.... Joy to the world, etc)

Yes, that's a bullfrog and no, they're no 'Joy to the world' at all!
From the end of May until about two days ago, when they suddenly stopped, they have been keeping us up at night with their LOUD mating calls!

The call is described as a series of loud, resonant bass notes sounding like rumm . . . rumm . . . rumm, or a stuttering ru-u-u-ummm . . . ru-u-u-ummm (often transliterated as “jug-o-rum”).
The aggressive call is an abrupt, spitlike phphoot! and a frightened individual, especially a juvenile, may give a loud eeek! when it leaps into the water.

The pond is their boxing ring, and the center is where you want to be. Being at the center proves you are the dominant male and therefore more likely to get a mate – you’ve just got to fight off the competition first…

          

          

As I mentioned, they've finally stopped and our nights are back to be wonderfully quiet and peaceful again.
Maybe the fact that the ponds are starting to dry up considerably has something to do with it as well ..

The weather has been hot this whole week with temps in the high 80s, low 90s.
I try to walk and water my garden early to beat the heat.
The grasses have all dried out but there are still some hardy wildflowers that are hanging in there.

After being surrounded by daisies for the last couple of weeks, it's now the turn of Queen Ann's Lace which adapts easily to drought and poor soil conditions and tends to grow where many things won't.

                                                           

                                                              

The raptors seem to have their 'hay-day' at the moment with all the young mice and squirrels around ...

 

James picked out some cabinets for the office, one of which they had in stock at Lowes so he went and picked it up.
It looked like this when he got it ... nothing wrong with it, no?

                                                                   

                                                          

Well, yes, nice cabinet, but of course it had to be 'modified'.
It was too deep, so out came the saw and soon enough it looked like this ..

                                                              

A couple of hours later, except for the caulking and paint that had to dry for a while, this was the end-result:

I must admit, that's a nice looking cabinet!
The shed-part is pretty much finished now. It got some more shelves for tools on the left and groceries on the right and a variety of hooks are holding the shovels and rakes in the middle.
We're getting so organized!

                                                    

We didn't have the energy for an outing this week, besides that it was too hot for doing much to begin with, but I did drive to Willamina early on Friday morning for the annual Garage Sale weekend.

                 

After driving around for an hour or 2 this was my haul:

A Wysocki puzzle and a rubber ring and ceramic inside pot, both for my Instant Pot (apparently you can bake a cake in it), each for only one dollar!

But my biggest score was a dehydrator to dry fruit, herbs and even jerky!
By some weird coincidence I came across one when I was grocery shopping the other day and mentioned to James that it might be fun to do.
I was just not going to pay $40-$80 for them, which is what they want for these things.
Guess what, I snatched this one up for only $5! Yes!

I'll by some fruit when it's in-season (and cheap) and I'm in business.
Healthy and fun!

 

The first hay of the summer is 'in'. The small meadows around the house and RV, not planted with Christmas trees, have been cut, dried and bailed.
The smell and look of the fresh dried grass always feels like summer to me ..

                      

I keep finding new summer flowers on the side of our road. These I think are Clarkias, a variety of evening primroses:



                                               

The pond is a coming and going of Dragonflies hunting after bugs, especially mosquitos:   

            

As I mentioned in the previous post temperatures were predicted to stay high and they reached their highest on Tuesday .... 99F(38C)!!

Thank heavens it cooled down after that and we're now looking pretty 'stable' at around 85F(30C). Still too high for my liking but much better ...
|We decided to find some shade in the forest and found this hike on-line:

                                                      

                                                           

Never knew we had Niagara Falls in Oregon, let alone this close (as in 45 minutes) to us!
Just out of Willamina we drove into the shady and especially cool (56F) Siuslaw National Forests of the coastal Cascades, which was a wonderful relief!
As you can see, about halfway in, the road changed into a dirt(y) one ...

                                                        

Although we managed to get lost for a while, despite following Google Maps, because the road you turn left (at a hiking sign) the last .2 miles isn’t otherwise marked, but we eventually got to the trailhead.
You really feel you're in the middle of nowhere, not a car passed us by the whole way in!

Supposedly it was a 'moderately challenging' 2 mile hike in-an-out and it was, although we think it was at least a mile more than that.
It was a peaceful and secluded hike with fern-and-moss-covered trees, and not a sound or a soul, around us ..

   

We came across several different red berries:

                  

  

                            

James tried that last one, saying it was a wild raspberry. I'm still not so sure yet, but he didn't keel over so at least it wasn't anything too deadly.

After about 25 minutes you see the first of the two waterfalls appear through the trees. People tend to get confused and assume this is Niagara Falls but it's actually Pheasant Creek Falls:

And just around a bend is Niagara Falls:

                                           

We walked to the base of Pheasant Creek Falls where we enjoyed a very peaceful cup of  coffee at the strategically placed and convenient picnic table.

It wasn't until we were almost back at the car that we encountered a whole tribe of people, a big family with lots of kids.
Phew, did we get lucky to have this beautiful place for ourselves for a while!

Back at the ranch, James finally finished the wall in between the shed and the office.
I don't know how many layers of mud and paint are on that thing but it took a while ... yes, he's nothing but a perfectionist ..

      

We're waiting for some cabinets to arrive, which will be placed on the left side there (one hanging, one standing) for all his office 'stuff'.

Almost there!