Unfortunately, this beautiful snowy landscape is NOT around us!

James had to pick up materials in La Grande, Oregon, about 5 hours away from us so he drove up on Thursday and came back on Friday.

He was very surprised to encounter nothing but snow as soon as he passed the town of Pollock, only 19 miles to the south of us!

Look how beautiful! This was just after sunrise, it still has a little pink glow to it ..




Past New Meadows ..

 

Up over the mountain range ..

And down on the other side towards Fruitvale, Cambridge and Ontario ..

Gorgeous!

I know it's good for the job that we don't have any, snow that is, but I'm still rather bummed about it! It's so beautiful!

We'd learned this spring that Riggins is situated in the so-called Idaho Banana Belt, as in:

A banana belt is defined as any segment of a larger geographic region that enjoys warmer weather conditions than the region as a whole, especially in the wintertime.

Shielded from storms by the eight- and nine-thousand-foot peaks of the Seven Devils to the west, the low elevation and the canyon with black rocks, which absorb heat from the sun and radiate the heat down into the canyon, Riggins boasts a “Banana Belt” sub-tropical climate.

Go figure! I guess that means little snow indeed!

Any-who, James spend the night at a hotel in La Grande, and after loading up the materials and picking up some groceries at the local Walmart, he went home the next morning. 
It had been a freezing cold night there (19F), and there was some snow on the ground but the roads were all clear and he made it home safe.

Which was fortunate, since it so happened to be that it was his birthday that day!
We celebrated the next morning with a belated birthday cake:

I left out the other 60 candles .. they didn't fit!

That Sunday was a beautiful day, 51F and sunny and we went for a little drive to Slate Creek, where James had to pick up a water tank from Don. 
We decided to do some sightseeing afterward and drove up Slate Creek road for a few miles ..

It's a pretty drive, and a decent dirt road leads you into a deep canyon .. 

After 4 miles you enter the Nez Perce National Forest, where there was a sign that the upcoming road was partially washed out, so we turned around.
Back into 'town', we turned onto Nut Basin road and followed it all the way up .. look at this view!

We drove over the hill to the other side where you enter a large open basin .. Nut Basin, I presume ..

And back up again across the basin, towards the snow!

 You look towards Grangeville here, but can't see it ..

As you can see, there's snow all around us, but not down below at the river where we are .. oh, well! 
Let's see, what else is new .. one of last mornings I discovered this herd of Elk on the hill towards the back of the canyon. I could actually see them from inside the RV!

This time there were a few males among them!

The work on the house is progressing nicely. Like I said, no snow, or much rain either, and the temperatures are much better than last week and it looks like they'll stay that way for a while longer.

So far it has been a much milder winter than normal, but that's what you get when we're in town!

After the concrete was poured and cured and all the trenches for pipes filled back up, it was time to install the new material that James had brought from La Grande.

It's called   , made of Styrofoam and very light weight and easy to work with ..

It's like building with Lego blocks!

The only problem is that when the wind blows (and boy does it blow!), it has a tendency to get airborne, so they have to make sure to hold onto it and anchor it down quickly ..

Starting to look like something!

Looks like we had a busy week doesn't it? Except maybe for Sunday ..

The guys are watching golf and I'm puzzling .. 

life is good!

Last Sunday we went for a short hike a little further up the gulch. 
It was a grey day, and as you can see there was still some snow on the hills around us from earlier last week ..

I took a picture of these same ponds last June .. hard to believe it will ever get green like this again!

June

We had some snow again that Sunday night, just an inch or so, but nothing like that forecast that I posted last time ..

 

Merl' was so 'not amused'! 'Not again', you could hear him think ..

 

The guys are happy of course that they didn't get any more snow, but it has been very cold lately, which isn't nice either.

James is wearing his thermal underwear and an insulated Carhartt coverall, which keeps him fairly warm, but despite the 2 or 3 pair of socks he's putting on, his toes are still freezing!

I'll better find him a pair of thermal socks and gloves, there's likely more winter still to come ..

Here he is, moving some piles of tree branches from the trees in the front of the house that they cut down a while ago, to the burn and firewood piles in the back.
They've also been digging more ditches and trenches for the sewer lines, and filling them back up with gravel ..

This is Tody (Steven's dog), their supervisor:

                                                  

Well, that's about all for this week I'm afraid, there's really not much else happening.

We went for a coffee to Riggins on Saturday, just to get 'out and about' a little, but we spent much of our free time inside at the moment where it's cozy and dry and, most importantly, warm!

Here's a picture I made a while ago. Now the leaves are off the trees, I spotted this nest hanging from a branch in a tree near the river, I think it's from an Oriole:

Besides it being extremely beautifully made, I thought it was interesting to see that they've used a lot of fishing line in the 'design'. I guess it's nice and sturdy!

And this is a butt-shot (or end-shot, as my blogging friend Judy used to say) of a Ring-necked Pheasant. 
I was in the car when I saw him and he just didn't want to turn around ..

So, there you have it .. the End (for now)

 Female Gambel's Quail

It's been a grey but fairly 'warm' week so far, the forecasted snow and frost didn't really happen, although it got terrible windy again.
We'd already tightened up the awnings over the slides last time it blew like this, but now we even anchored down the wooden slat we use to keep the material from flapping, to stop it from slamming up and down on the slide roof. 
We spent a long, sleepless night wide awake because of it! 

                                                                                                

Hard to see but there's a rope leading from the plank on top of the awning, down to the belly of the RV.

At the job site we braced the porta-toilet, since it blew over during the last storm. And that is nas-ty!

    
Even the guys are sometimes struggling to keep upright when a particular strong gust barrels through the canyon!
Talking about the job .. the first phase of the foundation-footing is finished! Yeah!



After the forms were in, a whole bunch of steel was put into place ..

Looks like this house is not going anywhere soon! (You'd think?)

Soon thereafter the cement was delivered!

       

There was a small window between upcoming snow and frost, so James seized the moment!

Ta-da, done and curing ..

Just in time, because take a look at this forecast:

You think it might snow?

Brrrr, I'm gonna run down to Riggins today to do some major grocery-shopping, and than I'm gonna hole up and might go into hibernation! I'm a bear, am I not?
Well, I might do some puzzling, I finally just finished 'Santa's Workshop':

 

It was a bear (ha, see what I did there?), but I got it done! 
But of course I'm a glutton for punishment, so I've already started the next one, 'New Year's party' .. which looks equally difficult:

We'll see how it goes, it looks like I'm going to have enough time on my hands! 
Time to do some more baking perhaps? 
I made one of James' favorites, a pineapple upside-down cake, but he's eating his way through it like there's no tomorrow .. and than what ?!
I'll probably make a batch of brownies, always a winner.

                                         

Merl's having nothing of this cold and windy weather and is already hibernating ..

He sleeps an awful lot, but he eats fine and his blood sugars are fairly stable, so life is good ..

                                        

                                     A little weird every now and than, but good!

And so life goes on as usual in this bright and shiny new year of 2020 ..  a little weird but mostly good! 

  A happy New Year Y'all!

And there we are, in the new year, at the start of a new decade. 
Another 'roaring twenties'? Time will tell!
So far we're off to a good start, James made 'oliebollen' and boy, they were good!

He baked them in the laundry room of  'the house' (no smelly RV!) , behind closed doors .. (secret recipe, you know)

 

 Making the dough was my contribution ..

 

   

They were delicious, very airy and not greasy at all! 

James likes them with cherries, I prefer them plain .. but with a heavy dusting of sugar of course!

We watched the Rose Parade out of Pasadena (and our favorite State of all, California) on TV :

And just had a very nice, relaxing rest of the day. 
Rather than watching TV in the evening, we played a game of dominoes, called Mexican Train.

Merl' thought is was fun to shuffle the stones ..

As usual I skunked James, although I almost lost it in the end-game (gained 100 points in one sweep, for a narrow win of 158 versus James' 167)!

We agreed we should play games more often, it was a lot of fun! Maybe establish a once a week game-night? We'll see ..

The weather has been a little warmer this last week, above freezing at least, with temperatures somewhere in the high 30s, low 40s.
Which was good news for the guys who were working on framing the forms for the foundation.

 

It's pretty much done by now, and the plan is to pour concrete next Tuesday. 

It needs 48 hours of temperatures above 32F to set and cure, and

the weather forecast is for snow and frosty nights starting on Thursday, so hopefully it will be in, and dry, by than!

I've spotted two groups of Mule Deer and a herd of Elk this week:

 
These are the deer, not easy to see (enlarging makes it even blurrier), but the one on the front left is a buck!

And this is the Elk herd, all cows I think ..

Just in case you wanna know .. male deer are bucks and female are does, where as male elk are bulls and the female cows .. yeah, confusing!

For our New Year's day dinner I made a big pot of traditional southern black-eyed peas (for pennies/good luck), with collards (for paper money/prosperity), ham-hock (pigs root forward when foraging and represent positive motion), stewed tomatoes (wealth/health) and corn-bread (gold/coins).
Hey, we need all the help we can get! 😁

 

By the way, instead of our usual lobsters, we had jumbo-scallops for dinner on New Year's eve. 

I usually love those but this time they didn't do it for me. Next time it will be lobsters again!

All in all we had a wonderful holiday season, relaxed and peaceful, catching up on a lot of small chores, re-organizing, searching the Internet, spinning, puzzling, etc, etc  ..

 Let's hope it will continue to be like this!