Sitting at the breakfast table and looking out the window towards the pond I got a nice surprise this week ... looking back at me with it's huge yellow eyes was this fledgling/juvenile Great Horned Owl!

            

You seldom see an owl during the daylight hours but this was a joung'un, probably still 'in training' and not yet knowing when to call it a day/night?
He was hopping around a little in the reeds around the pond, flapping his wings and returning to that tree-stomp a couple of times to preen his feathers.

                                    

I love his downy head! Looking quite impressive with that beak and those talons but still sporting a lot of fluffy baby-down!
Just when I started to worry that he might have problems flying or worse, being hurt somewhere, he lifted from his perch and flew smoothly into a big tree at the edge of the forest.
What a thrilling encounter!

That same morning, at the river, the Osprey were flying around the nest :

  

 

 

I wrote in a previous post that I was almost sure that these were the parents and that the chicks seemed to have left the nest, but in hindsight I think these actually are the chicks!

                                                       

 

I did some research online and found that chicks begin to practice flying and hunting skills around two months of age and while they learn to fish for themselves, they still rely on their parents for a period after fledging. 
They may continue to roost at the nest site and beg for food from their parents.

We still have very pleasant summer weather here in the PNW. There are the occasional hot days but on average we're very comfortable with temps around the 76-80F.
Apparently we're the lucky ones according to this map:

 

Thank goodness for living where we live! 

Although it's not easy to keep any plants and flowers going over here .. think two huge dogs, a whole colony of hungry ground-squirrels, chipmunks, birds and night-marauding deer .. I do have some that are doing very well.
I especially like the Zinnias: 

                               

Look at those vibrant colors and interesting stamen!

      

I picked up a priced down Cosmos at Walmart ($2 instead of $6.95), cut out some of the spent flowers and voila ... 

                                         

The Day-lilies are still going strong and the African daisies keep producing flowers like there is no tomorrow!
      

Our landlord has started to build the new barn .. part of the concrete floor is salvaged and cleaned up and the first poles are going in/up.:

 

 

Six poles are in, only 28 more to go! It's going to be a big barn!

We went to another garage sale yesterday, another 'yearly city-wide' one, this one in Sheridan, the little town to the other side of us.

                                               

                                                             

We weren't as successful as last week, there weren't that many 'good' ones, but James found a few small tools so it wasn't a total bust., but we probably won't 'do' this one again next year. Willamina's is much better!

 

Afterwards we decide to go to the Wallace farm, just outside of town, near Amity, to see if we could pick some blueberries.

                          

We went there last year, but much later in the season when the berries that were left were a lot smaller and picked for 2 hours to fill a 2 gallon bucket.

 

This time around it was the start of the season and the berries were big and plentiful so it took us only one hour and fifteen minutes to fill a bucket!



                                                                         

After washing , drying and bagging them at home we ended up with about 12 pounds (48 cups) of beautiful berries. 
Not quite enough to get us through the winter now we've started to have smoothies for breakfast but it will last us for a while.

My latest (white sourdough) bread was a beaut:

                 

And the peach freezer jam I made from the fresh peaches we picked 2 weeks ago turned out very yummy as well ...

 
                                                                                         

 

Which brings me to the end of another post.
This afternoon we'll go and seen another play in McMinnville's Gallery Theater which, if I don't forget, will review next week.

 

Phew, it was a rather hot week here in Willamina, Orgeon! 
Tempeartures reached 95F here around the RV on Tuesday but Wednesday was even warmer at 97F!

  

After almost 3 weeks of no rain whatsoever the fields and meadows are all dried up,  and although my considerate neighbors try to slow down as much as possible when they pass me on our dirt-road, there's no avoiding the dust their cars throw up ...  everything is covered in the stuff, even the inside of the RV.

I walked down to the river, which has dropped considerably. 
It's very shallow and those rocks you see in the picture up above are normally completely covered in winter.

It's actually a nice cool spot to sit down for a while with your feet in the water. 
I'll keep it in mind for a hot day, of which I'm sure we're going to have some more before the summer is over.

At the moment the river bank is still covered in Sweet peas and Thistles and the sound of bees buzzing around the last flowers is all you hear ..

                

They've been busy all Spring, the bees I mean, since all our fruit trees are positively loaded with fruit!
Since they are never trimmed, some branches of the old apple and pear trees are bending that far over under their load that I'm starting to worry they might break.

        

And look at those little plums! I thought they were 'ornamental' but it seems they're actually edible!

The first of the blackberries alongside our road, those that are having the most sun, are starting to ripen as well!

 

 

I picked a few (they are nice and sweet!) together with a couple of left-over Snow-peas and the first of my cherry tomatoes. Yeaee, I've got tomatoes!

The three deer, that come by every now and than to graze on the weeds and grasses in  between the Christmas trees, showed up a couple of evenings this week.
This looks like a young buck, he's growing his antlers .. 
                                       

                           

He's always accompanied by these two pretty girls .. his first harem?

                                                                                                                                                          

On Friday morning we hit the yearly 'City garage sale' in Willamina.

We didn't 'need' anything but it's a fun day to cruise all over town, talk to lots of people and find those unique, affordable items you didn't know you were missing ... or find things for a bargain that you would like to have but don't want to spend much money on.
Besides, we like to re-use/re-cycle!

We came home with a dress ($1, very flower power-y!), a brand-new wind-shield wiper ($2), a walking measuring wheel ($2, handy for James 'in the field' since his laser is occasionally not working), an easy-up canopy ($25, our old one went kaput) and an ancient video (1984), Murphy's romance .. of all things .. (for free)!

          

(There's a story to that video though, James brother lives in the town (Florence, AZ) in which' hardware-store some parts were filmed. We actually were in that store a few times when we worked on his house and since I've never seen it James thought is was fun to watch it)

But our greatest 'catch' was this .. a generator!

We'd talked about it many times, how nice it would be to have one in case of power outages, but we never really had the budget to get one. Those suckers are anywhere between $600 to $1000, at least the one we wanted, as in one big enough to keep most of our 'essentials' going.
This particular one costs $699 new and we got it for ... drum-roll .. $225!
It's used of course, but it works and is in good condition. Score!

What else did we do? O yeah, we finally washed and treated the roof and gave the whole RV a, much needed, scrub-down. 

 

 

 

We try to do this at least twice a year (the cleaning at least, the roof treatment only once a year) but it got away from us a little and we started to look a bit rough around the edges. 
Not quite looking like 'trailer-trash' but not very 'posh' either. 

 

                                                             

James did most of the scrubbing and coating and I the washing and rinsing ...
Teamwork!

My ankle is slowly getting back to almost normal but now my neck and back are misbehaving, so I didn't want to do anything too crazy .. sigh .. always something!

It didn't stop me from making another bread though. 
This whole wheat one (actually only 1/4 but most whole wheats are like that, a 100 % wheat flour bread would be inedible) rose beautifully. 
The slices are huge!

  

 
OK. Another week in the books, let's see what the next one will bring shall we.. 

 

July's full moon, aka the Buck moon, was a very big and very orange one!

The name refers to the fact that this is the time of year the new antlers of male deer (bucks) grow more rapidly, often reaching their full size by late summer.

The weather seems to be done with it's gently-sliding-into-summer days and has gone into full blast 'extreme heat-watch' mode with temperatures into the low 90s!
The mornings are just cool enough (if I go early and don't dilly-dally) to squeeze in a walk and my ankle is allowing me to walk as far again as the little waterfall in the river ..
(it still swells up some in the evening but that also has to do with the heat)

                 

I think with going to Holland for 3 weeks, coming back sick for another, followed by spraining my ankle and not being able to walk for a good four more, I missed the hatching of the Osprey-chicks.
I'm pretty sure these two I photographed this week are the parents ... looking sort of forlorn, maybe suffering from the 'empty nest syndrome' ..?

  

After the yellow of the buttercups, the red of the clover, the white of the daisies and the (still flowering profusely) queen Ann's lace, this week some more pink joined that of the sweet peas along the road-side .. 

      

That's Clarkia on the left, aka 'Farewell to Spring', which the bees particularly seem to love, and Common Centaury, aka 'Gentian' on the right, believed to help against fever.

Chicory and False Dandelions are very happy in these hot circumstances as well ...

As I mentioned in last's week blog we needed to stock up on fruit for the freezer to get us through the coming winter, so we drove to Dallas for a visit to Perryhill Farm:

                                                      

This beautiful farm is a 'U-pick' and we decided to go for the raspberries and the peaches:

   

     

And although we weren't the only ones there, there was enough for everybody. Look at that gorgeous fruit!
They sell some veggie plants, jams and jellies, cookies and dried fruit and eggs as well ...

We went a little overboard and picked 7 pounds of raspberries and 50(!) of the peaches but they have to last us through the winter so it's OK.
One little problem is that we only have a small freezer, so storing it all will be tight!

         

Of course you also have to peal and pit and cut everything ... 

    

Some of the peaches got a little too bruised in transport, so some of the mushed parts I'll use for jam and with the rest I filled up my muffin and brownie pans and froze them in small (about 1 cup) batches:

        

Perfect size to use (thawed) in a smoothy!
The rest we cut up for pies and cobblers and crisps and ... well, you get the picture!

And since we seem to go through bread like their is no tomorrow (I never realized we ate so much of it) I had to bake some more. 
This sandwich bread created an odd bulge there on one side .. it tasted fine of course:

    

I usually have some sweet bread in the freezer as well, most of the time in the form of store-bought English-muffins, the raisin ones, and since we were also out of those I decided to bake something similar myself.

This is Irish soda-bread, but contrary to the Irish version which is quite dense, this is the American version, which has a more tender, slightly cake-y crumb:

 

 

Can you say delicious? So Yummmmmy! I'm afraid it's not going to last long ..

Last but not least, I emptied one side of my tumble-composter. The other side is almost full so I needed to make room for the next batch. 
It pretty much works out this way, that by the time this needs to happen, the compost is 'done' on the other side.

                   

I thought it was a little too wet, so I let it dry for a day on a tarp, after which it was good to be bagged. It made for 2 full sand-bags of good looking compost, if I say so myself ..

I'll save it for the Fall when I'll top-off my raised beds with it.
Cool!