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.