This morning another proud mama duck showed up with her little ones! 
I have no clue where she has been hiding, the nest had to be somewhere under the overhanging blackberry bushes or maybe on the right side of the pond where a few trees and shrubs hid it from sight?

                   

 I counted seven babies, lets hope some of them survive! 

 

After the first pink wild roses its now the time for the white ones to make an appearance.
They're even more prolific, they grow in huge masses alongside our road. 

 

I say white, but the buds are actually a soft pink, so pretty, and they also have a slight sweet smell ...

                                                       

                                                        

My own rose has quite some buds and the first are opening. It's not as happy as when I bought it, two years ago, I probably should put it in a bigger pot.
I bought some new fertilizer as well so this year I'll make a little bit more of an effort and feed those poor plants, something I've not been very good at in previous years.



Fortunately lupines don't need much to feel good and mine send up three beautiful tall spikes:


                                                                 


The logging road I follow into the forest twice a week is lined with Giant Hogweed. 
Those plants grow so fast, I swear, they're like bamboo, shooting up a foot in the blink of an eye!

I also came across these large shrubs covered in round clusters of white flowers. My plant identification app says its a Pacific Ninebark:

                                         

 

                                         

The bees and butterflies love them and me too!

In one of my previous posts I showed a picture of this Oregon Bigroot, growing everywhere in the ditches along the roads:

 

They also go by Manroot, Old-man-in-the-ground and Wild Cucumber. 
Especially that last name is starting to make a lot more sense now those little flowers have grown into this:

  

How cool!

Too bad I came across this little snake, what I think is a Rubber Boa, which unfortunately didn't make it across the road ..

They are completely non-venomous, they are constrictors, and entirely harmless to humans. They are actually very docile and some people have them as pets ..

He might have been killed by one of these big trucks that have been driving up and down our road for a couple of days this week :

They are logging somewhere up the hill and are using several trucks a couple of times in an hour to bring them down. 
I always make sure to be a good way off the road into the berm or ditch but the truck-drivers are very nice and slow down as much as they can for me.
They leave a lot of dust behind though!

Speaking of dust, we've been working hard these last 2 days to clean the RV!

 

 

 

But besides dust, the main thing that we have to get rid off after another wet Oregon winter is mold!
It took us 2.5 hours for the roof alone and another 3 hours to scrub the rest of the thing down!

                                                           

And as I'm writing this James is crawling around on the roof again to treat it with a special rubber-roof coating which protects it against dirt and sun (oxidation).
It has to be done twice a year either on a cloudy day or in the evening when the sun doesn't shine, like right now. 
Fortunately this goes fairly fast .. 'only' an hour or so!

Well, it sounds like he's done, so it's time to finish this post. 
In the past two weeks we cleaned the car, the truck and now the RV is done as well!

                                                   Time for some R&R!