Rufus-sided (or Spotted) Towhee 

It's that time of the year when birds are getting antsy and are starting to get ready to find mates, build nests, lay eggs and raise babies!
The Towhee in the picture above was singing his little heart out on one of the beautiful sunny mornings this week.

It was warm enough to enjoy a cup of coffee sitting outside ..

                       

                                                                  

Where I watched a Red Robin gathering huge mouthfuls of dead grass from the meadow in front of the RV:

He was very serious about picking up as much as he could carry and eventually flew away with a huge wad of hay in his beak, barely able to see around it .. I hope he didn't crash-land somewhere!

The various cherries at the start of our road are all flowering in full now, some pink and some white:

The two large willows at the bottom of the property are leafing out rapidly!

And the furry catkins of the pussy willows at the village pond are opening up as well:

In the neighbor's meadow this enormously pregnant cow tried to look around her huge belly when she heard me walking behind her on the road ..

                                       

I thought there might even be two in there, although I haven't seen any twins yet.
Most of them have only one, but these are big cows (Angus) and I guess that means big babies!
Two days later she was the proud mama of only one calf after all!

It's the first brown calf of the herd! So far I've only seen black ones, even if there mother's were brown.

                             

Other than all things 'Spring' moving forward rapidly, I don't have much else to report I think, besides the usual goings-on ..
I did some baking. As I said before I think I've finally sort of mastered sourdough bread!
This (partially wheaten) sandwich bread really came out just perfect (knock-on-wood!).

I suspect that the main reason for succeeding lately is the maturity of my starter. It's happy as can be, lively, bubbly and strong!
Tradition compels me to name your starter, and I've seen some funny ones, but I haven't come up with something fitting yet.
It will come to me ..

After a phone call with my mom in which she mentioned having had 'boterkoek' when having coffee with my niece, I had a sudden craving for this typical old-dutch pastry so I made one myself:

                                    

It takes a whole package of real butter and the same amount of sugar but since this a Sunday-only treat we're not going to think about such trivial things now, won't we?
(Boterkoek, or Dutch butter cake, is a toothsome snacking cake and classic of Dutch cuisine. With almost as much butter as flour, Dutch butter cake is rich and dense. It's closer to a large cookie than a cake, but then the Dutch word for cookie, koekje, also means little cake.)

Besides having coffee out on the patio we also had our first dinner outside this week .. can you believe it, dinner outside in March? It was still 70F (21C) at 6 pm. Wow!
I just really hope this doesn't forebode a terrible hot summer ..