We've had a week of clear blue skies and lots of sunshine although the daytime temps didn't get above 40F and most nights ended up below freezing ..
(here's a pic of the temp at 8am, as you can see 27F is -3C)

The pond next to us would almost freeze over completely but for the deepest parts in the middle, something a group of ducks seem to take advantage of by spending the night here lately .. or maybe the pond doesn't freeze because they spend the night and keep it open that way?

The ice only just holds them .. as soon as they move they fall through.

My bird-feeders are emptied every day .. yes, all four of them!
I fill them in the middle of the afternoon so they can eat up before night falls (and it gets cold), which gives them enough left over for the next morning to eat as early as the sun comes up.
Which means that I don't have to get out early!

The blackberry bushes along the edge of the pond and next to the feeders are perfect perches to wait your turn .. and warm up a little in the morning sun.

I'd half a mind of mowing the nasty, prickly buggers of shrubs down this summer but I guess they do serve a purpose. As a famous dutch soccer player always used to say “Elk nadeel, heb z'n voordeel” (every disadvantage has it's advantage).

When I looked a little closer at the border where the feeders are situated I noticed some leaf-tips coming up already!



They're most likely from the Daffodil bulbs I haphazardly planted in the fall, sort of as an afterthought, and not thinking they would come to much .. cool!

And in the neighbor's orchard the Snowdrops are flowering!

Of course Walmart had placed a large rack of emerging bulbs strategically at the entrance to the store .. too hard to resist for only $1.79!

                                              

And although I'm always hoping to see some wildlife, here's one creature I was not so happy to find 'popping up' all of a sudden from somewhere out of the blackberry bushes near the pond below us:

He really should still be hibernating!
Ground squirrels in Oregon usually don't emerge from hibernation until February/March when the temperature is consistently above freezing, but I guess the warm weather of last week must have woken up this one up a little too early and he decided to dig himself out to take a look-see.

I hope he goes back to 'bed' for a while since his (their) constant digging in my flour bed last year was a huge pain in the butt!

After more than a week-long of very foggy sunrises, we finally woke up to a clear, albeit very cold, morning!
With a temperature of 28F ( -2C ) everything was frozen crisply and white:

 

                                          

One of the ponds had a nice layer of ice on it  .. but not enough to skate (be still my dutch heart)  .. yet!

And guess who celebrated his 66th?
                 
               

He'd requested a Crisp for a birthday-'cake' so that's what he got .. a quite delicious apple-blueberry one!
(That little (musical) candle should have played 'happy-birthday' but unfortunately the battery, after faithfully doing just so for 15 years, has finally given up the ghost!

                                                           

Despite the fact that this was still one of those foggy mornings, he took his chances and drove to Newberg for a celebratory birthday-round of golf with his golf-buddies.
As luck would have it Newberg was fog-free and he played a decent round.

That evening we drove to the Riverside Cafe in Sheridan for a tasty meal of Prime-rib.
No photos, but take my word for it, it was good!

Still not much to report about any interesting wildlife coming through.
This Crow was 'croaking' at me on one of my walks. I'm always impressed by their size, they sure are BIG birds!

Just like last year, when they came by a couple of times in January, the pond has attracted some Canadian geese again lately:

                                         

And on today's crisp, frosty morning a couple of Mallards and 'our' local heron spent some time in the back of the pond, soaking up what little warmth these wintry rays of sunshine give off ..

    

And look, who do we have here?

Yes, there's a new kid in town.
Say hello to Samson!

Now they're officially retired from their roofing-business (per January 1st), our landlords have acquired another dog!

He is a Turkish Boz/Anatolian Shepherd, a giant breed with the height of a small pony and of which the males can weigh around 180 pounds!
(Just for comparison, their dog Cocco, who is a half Maremma/Great Pyrennee, weighs 'only' half of that ...)

Isn't he the cutest? He looks like a little bear to me. He's sweet as can be .. for now .. but he's definitely no submissive dog, he's game for anything !
We're going to make very sure he's going to see us as part of  'the pack' though .. I don't think I want to be on his wrong side when he grows into his older (and bigger) self!

This week has seen a lot better weather than we've had for weeks.
Still some rain, almost every day, but long stretches of dry, sometimes even sunny, periods as well!
That's Mt Hood up above catching the last rays of sun on such a clear afternoon and the one below is overlooking the fields of 'our' property on a beautiful clear, early morning sunrise ...

                     

Most mornings still start foggy, as these pictures of my view from the hill behind us show, where I normally can see the high-school when it's clear:

        

        

The cows from our neighbor have been back since late November (he moves them to a property he has on the coast for the summer) and to my surprise there are already a few calves among them!
                                                
           

This is of-course the reason he brings them back to these fields around his farm, to have eyes on them when they calve, but I guess I figured they wouldn't arrive until Spring!
Oh well, shows how much I know about these things ..

In the meadow next to the cows, which belongs to our landlord, I quite often come across this Blue Heron:

                                                      

At first I wondered what a heron would look for in the middle of a meadow but it turns out that those fields are really muddy, in fact downright swampy, right now after all the rain and they are a prime environment for wintering frogs! 

         
                             
Walking along the river the other day I was thrilled to suddenly come face to face with this beautiful Bald Eagle:

I knew they've been seen around the area, there's several breeding pair in the Basket Slough area we visited last year, but I'd never seen one right here!
I immediately froze when I saw him and very slowly brought up my camera to take several shots but I shouldn't have been concerned since while he definitely saw me, he just kept a majestic, stern eye on me from his high perch in a dead tree and wasn't impressed about my presence at all.
We both knew who was King here, and it wasn't me!

The weather-forecast shows a whole week of cool days and freezing nights coming up but (so far) no snow ..
I'm still keeping my hope up to get some and in the meantime try to 'set the scene' by making my favorite snow-puzzle for this time of the year:

                        

It's the one made of foam, whose pieces are lighter than air, which means 'nobody sneeze' and 'keep the windows closed'!

Here's another picture in the category 'beautiful skies'.
It's a sunrise, which I probably should have started this blog with, but oh well .. let's be different shall we?

 

Once again we toasted to the start of a new year!
2025 Should be an easy number to remember although it's hard to believe we're already a quarter of the way through the 21st century!

Once again the 'oliebollen' were made by the master oliebollen-chef:

                                                

To shake our traditions up a little we only made half a batch this year and added another dutch favorite to the equation ... appel-beignets/appelflappen, which are basically slices of apple deep-fried in a batter similar to that of pancakes.
Sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar they are really delicious!




As always we watched the Rose Parade on TV, 'all the way' from Pasadena, CA.
(When we were traveling the States this used to be the case, now we're actually fairly 'close').
Although we never went to the parade we know the area well and it always brings back good memories of sunny California ..

                                 

The floats were stunning as usual and the day sunny and warm, with temps in the low 70s!

In our neck of the woods this last week was still extremely rainy, not a day went by without some and most days it rained pretty much the.. whole .. day .. long!
 

Every now and than we had a little break during which I took some fast walks and snapped a few pictures but those moments were few and far between:              

      

The trees in this last picture almost seem to they have leaves, as green as they are, but that's actually moss.
Really anything in Oregon that stands still for a couple of minutes in winter will be covered in moss .. no kidding!

We see little wildlife although this small group of Quail comes by in the morning every now and than:

                               

And the Red-winged Blackbirds are still hanging around.
When they show up, always in a large flock, they make short work of all the seeds in the feeders:

               

                                               


In an attempt to somewhat keep them away, and give the small birds a chance to have at least some of the food, I ordered two of these special feeders that have cages around them.
(Another Temu buy).

                       

They've only just arrived and it looks like they work, although some of the more limber blackbirds still manage to reach through the gaps.

These little Pine Siskins have no problem at all to get inside the cages.

And that's it for this week, life is back to 'normal' again and we're in that time of the year that nothing much is happening for a while.
I'm going to take down the decorations after the weekend, although I may leave the outside lights up for a while longer.

I finally finished my Christmas puzzle, the one of Santa's workshop, which took me a while in between all the festivities.
Oh well, better late than never ..

         

O, I almost forgot, of course we had our 'lucky Black-eyed Pea soup' for dinner on the 1st!
Besides supposedly bringing luck it's delicious eats!