I don't think this is the same doe that has been coming around with her fawn all summer, this one's a lot lighter in color and has even some white markings on her throat and legs.
I really didn't see her at all at first, even though I was looking right at her ..

                                                               Can you see me know?

It wasn't until she moved that I spotted her .. she seems to love eating the old blackberry leaves, which she very dainty and carefully picks off the thorny brambles ..

Her pickings are getting slimmer I guess, lots of leaves have fallen, although the grass is still rather green and even still growing somewhat.
My cosmos is still putting out quite a lot of flowers, it really didn't start do anything much until September come to think of it. I'm happy with the little bit of color it gives!
And look at those (two) strawberries! So cute ..

  

As you can see by that drop of rain hanging on the strawberry, we're still having quite a lot of rain at the moment. There's some dry hours here and there but it looks like that rain is here to stay for the season!
It causes the area around the RV getting rather muddy (aside from the platform with the mat in the front and the pallets at the back) and we've been trying to come up with something that will give us something like a dry walkway to the office.
We finally decided to put down some cheap outdoor carpet which seems to work quite well:

 

It's totally eco-conscious carpet by the way, made from post-consumer recycled plastic drinking bottles! Look at us, we're so 'green'!

Let's see, what else .. oh, for our weekly dinner-out we ended up in a Latin american restaurant, Pura Vida, in Mcminnville.
Pura Vida is the Costa Rican song for good life and 'cocina' means kitchen.

We had to get some stuff at Lowes (like that outdoor carpet) so we took advantage of trying something we don't have in Newberg.
It's a small relaxed restaurant which offers Latin American inspired food and drinks from several countries including Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Perú, Argentina, and Ecuador.
We ordered Piquillos, quinoa stuffed peppers, and Paella.

I thought the paella was a little small for what we payed ($19) and the chicken was dry and overcooked, but the rest tasted OK, especially the mussels were excellent. The stuffed peppers were actually very nice and the salad very large and fresh.
All in all not bad, but I don't think we'll be back.

I did some nice cooking for the weekend myself. For breakfast there was a Grand Slam, which for some reason had been a while .. always good!



And for dinner I threw a whole chicken in the Instant pot and cooked it sort of 'sous-vide', as in totally submersed in water, which is very unusual for the instant pot, normally you only use a cup or so.
See? As I joked on Whatsapp, a la Swedish Chef: ' Zee-a Cheecka is in zee-aa basket .. ehh .. Instuont put! Børk, børk, børk!

And guess what, it was delicious! Much juicier than when using the conventional method! Definitely what James always says .. 'it's a winner'!

Our little home always looks so cozy in the fall.
The woodstove is glowing, all the lights are on, the Great British baking Show (reruns) is on the Telly and there's a puzzle on the table ..

Home sweet home ..

 

 

Last week's evening of dining-out brought us at 'Social Goods Market' on Newberg's main street, a large pub and wine & beer market, which also serves some pretty good food.



Despite the rather cool weather the facade/windows of the pub were all opened up to the outside, but because the place was packed, we were cozy enough due to the heat of all the bodies! (Well, that and because we kept our coats on of course ..).

Our dinner that evening coincided with the 'First Friday Artwalk' which is held on the first Friday of the month (surprise, surprise), during which all the stores and art galleries are open until 8pm.

   

                                       

It's a fun evening to be out and about. We had not been into town much yet and it is good to see that this town is actually doing really well. All the buildings are occupied, nothing's boarded up as is the case in so many small towns elsewhere and there's a nice variety of shops from clothing to food to art.
This being Newberg, of course there's also wine to taste in almost every shop, and there's food everywhere.

Like I mentioned above the weather this week has been not much better than the previous one. It's cool, damp, and occasionally windy, but every now and than there are a few dry periods which James took advantage off by getting a very fast round of golf in ... since there wasn't anybody on the course, he managed to play a whole round in 2 hours!

But this is how it looks most days at the moment, more and more leaves are coming down, we can almost see our neighbors behind us through the trees now ..
And, especially now we lost daylight-savings-time last weekend, the days are definitely getting shorter which, combined with the dark and gloomy weather, makes it look pretty dark at 4pm already ..

My heel is still not doing much better, so I try to stay off my feet as much as I can (no morning hikes) and I now work in the office almost every morning, which is actually not so bad with all this rain and it also gives me something to do...                    

          

Not that I'm ever bored of course .. in the afternoons I enjoy my cozy little home, do some spinning, knitting, reading or puzzling, and like to work on cooking some nice fall dinners.
Like corned beef with cabbage. Not just for St. Patrick's day in this household. Yum!

Or 15-bean soup with cornbread .. a warm hearty meal for several days!



And of course I'm working on that freezer full of berries. This is a blueberry buckle ..

                                                           

So delicious! A lovely cake, our beautiful berries and than those crunchy, sweet crumbles! No calories in that one ... 😁

I guess this blog was all about food. Well .. you're a Hess or you're not!

At Champoeg State Park .. beautiful fall leaves along the Willamette River

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful"  ... oh wait, that's still a month or so away I guess, but the weather is really sort of frightful at the moment. Rain, wind and quite cool with temperatures around 50F!
I'm mostly staying inside where it's warm and cozy and only venture out to go to the office, all but 500 yards away .. I'm starting to get the hang of the basics and according to James I now know about 80% of what I'll be going to do when I'll start working for him in the future. Cool!

The week was not all lost in rain though, it so happened to be quite nice on Sunday morning, so we decided to go for a first visit to Champoeg State Park, only a 10 minutes drive from us.



This beautiful park is situated on the south bank of the scenic Willamette River and consist of acres of forest, fields, and wetlands.
It's the site of a former settlement in the 1840s, now a ghost town, where the famous 1843 vote to form the first provisional government of the Oregon Country took place.

We took our time to visited the visitor center and little museum where we learned that this very river wiped out the once thriving port city in 1861 when it rose 55 feet (17 m) above its normal summer stage, flooding the town with seven feet (2 m) of water!



I'd hoped to see some fall colors, and there were still some around but due to last weeks rain, and especially the wind, a lot of leaves were already on the ground.

We drove to the river for a little peak through the trees and a view of the old Pioneer memorial building, but than we had to cut our visit short since we had a tee-time at the golf course, and since this would be the only dry afternoon for a while we wanted to take advantage of it!
We will certainly go back though for some more exploring and possibly some hiking (imagine that!).

Actually, I didn't end up going because my heel is causing me a lot of trouble at the moment. I'm suffering from what I think is either a heel-spur or plantair-fascitis, already since before I went to Holland, and although it had gotten a little better lately with the help of an insole in my shoe, it is getting worse again ..
On top of that I have a lingering, at times burning, pain in my right buttock, which is most likely due to a pinched sciatic nerve .. how fun getting old(er)!
I think my hiking days will be on hold for a while .. not that I would be doing a lot of it with all this rain!

For our weekly dinner out this time around we went to the Korean restaurant in town, Kori Ramen.

James has been to Korea but I had never had any Korean food so I looked forward to try something new.
Their restaurant is among the few that are open, although there weren't too many clients. Just as well, Covid numbers are up here too ..

                                                                   

We had the Bulgoki Spicy Shrimp and Spicy Pork Yakisoba. Both delicious! I especially liked the Korean noodles of the Yakisoba.

Than there was Halloween of course, and Newberg's main street was packed! I was picking James up after golf and totally forgot about Halloween and couldn't believe how many people were out there!

Some wore masks already because .. well .. Halloween costumes of course, and some wore mask for Covid, but a lot didn't wear any at all .. because .. who cares, don't they? Sometimes I get so mad about all the stupid people out there who still don't get it.
I actually hope they do get it .. see how that feels you dumb-asses ..
Sorry. Moving on.

Well, it's a short one this week I guess. For now, stay warm and dry and .. (as Whoopie Goldberg on the View just said) 'put the toilet seat down!' 😄

 

Boy, oh, boy, did it rain last week! We had quite some serious downpours accompanied by very strong wind-gusts. We heard that Mcminnville had a gust of 85 miles/hour!
A few trees went down in the county but fortunately we didn't loose any power and besides some large branches that came down around us from the oak we're under, we had no damage at all.
Which can not be said from the poor folks in California, they suffered several flash-floods and mudslides and people lost their lives because of downed trees crashing on cars and houses.

                                                            

Despite the bad weather, which caused lots of leaves to fall already, the vineyards are still showing their gorgeous colors ..

Pretty eh? But most of the week it looked more like this:

   

Ans since the rest of the week wasn't any better, we didn't even get to golf at all!
We did order sushi to go on Wednesday though, and brought it over to Doug and Brenda for an easy dinner for all of us.
No pictures of course .. sigh, I don't know why it is so hard to take a picture of the four of us but it almost never happens ..
Here's two of how the food looked like, sort of:

It was delicious once again!

One nice thing coming out of all this wetness are ... mushrooms!

They literary seem to pop up over-night, and although some look rather tasty we didn't chance trying any of them. I'm pretty sure they're all poisonous ..

As for the orchard we're sitting in (which looks so pretty when it doesn't rain doesn't it?) soon, Brett (our landlord) will cut some trees down to sell as Christmas trees, and Serena (his wife) has her eye on one for herself.

                    

All the little ones will stay of course, so fortunately it won't be looking like one of those clear-cut disaster areas, like we sometimes come across when we drive through the forests around here.

I think that was about all for this week. Due to the weather we didn't 'do' much. We basically spend the weekend inside. Which was very cozy nevertheless.
We had the fireplace going, took long and lazy coffee breaks and made some simple meals. James took the opportunity to put some hours of study in and I started a new puzzle.
The one that I only make once a year, in the fall .. lots of pumpkins!

                         

Hopefully next weekend will be better, we might be able to get some golf in and I'd like to check out the Champoeg State Park, which is only 10 minutes away from us.

The forecast does look a lot better, so we'll see!