Just like last year, the maples are starting to show their amazing fall colors all over town. These are the ones on the road to the golf course. Just stunning!

I've been looking for mushrooms, which usually shoot up immediately in the fall after some rain, but haven't found too many yet .. here's a few I detected on my walk this week:

The Thistles are always at their most decorative in the fall I think:

                                 

And the Snowberries and Rosehips have appeared. Favorite winter-food for Robins .. and bears!
I once had a dog that went nuts for rose-hips, they were a nice incentive for getting her to speed up when she tried to stall our walks, just by picking them at the side of the road and rolling them ahead of us one by one ..

Once again the air around Newberg is filled with dust clouds, not from harvesting grass or corn this time around but for picking up the hazelnuts (filberts) from the orchards where they have fallen from the trees!



They use huge harvesters to sweep and suck them up in one go-through .. very efficient. 
But dusty!

I've found a 'wild' tree on one of the paths I walk and have been picking up a handful every time I pass. I'm drying and storing them in a paper bag. It takes about 6 weeks for them to dry and cure.They're going to be so good in all kind of baking!

A lot of our (mostly James') time this week has been taken up by working on our new RV site.
I took some pictures but forgot to take one from the house up above, where our landlords live, looking down the hill to what's going to be 'our' site, but here's an old picture of a couple of years ago when we visited them ..

The RV is going to be to the right of that silver barn, just down and at the back of that slight slope in between the trees. They probably won't see us from up above.
This is looking back at that slope standing at the site:

And this is looking at the pond just below us (which is hard to see in this pic since it's covered in green algae) towards the other side, which is going to be part of our view out of the side windows:

The back windows will have a distant view of the mountain range, like this ..

James went over to Sheridan by himself for a couple of days to create a pathway to our pad and level it, and I helped a day compressing it all by driving a heavy forklift back and forth for a couple of hours:

That's all the work being done on the path towards the RV in the picture above and this is where our RV is going to be:



And this is a picture after James started to go to town on it ...

We're now waiting for a few rainy days to pass before we'll be able to spread some gravel on top!
There's still a lot more to do, digging trenches for water/sewer and electric, but it's a start!

After a summer's break I'm back to puzzling again. I just finished this beautiful desert scene from CharlesWysocki:

And with some leftover pumpkin puree, from when I made that delicious pumpkin cobbler the week before, I made pumpkin/spice donuts.
These are not fried but baked. Much healthier ... if you forget about the melted butter and sugar they're dunked in when they're done!

                                                 

We had a few beautiful warm days this week with temperatures back in the 80s. Which meant we could still eat outside in October!

                  

The menu was more appropriate for the season .. meatloaf and mashed potatoes ..
yumm!

               

Fall is slowly starting to show it's pretty colors.
We're surrounded by maples in our yard and the first leaves are turning, giving a little preview of what's coming ...
These trees are going to be spectacular in a couple of weeks!

                                         

The weather took a little bit of a nose-dive through the week, temperatures fell into the 60's (40's at night) and it rained pretty much every day.
I managed to get a few walks in during the intermissions ...

I think the lake still looked rather pretty with those dark shadows .. sort of a gloomy fall kind of vibe .. the one that makes you want to go home and have a nice mug of hot chocolate!                         

Which I did, and I even turned my little fireplace on .. so cozy!

The birds have finally caught on to my bird-feeders:

     
That's a Chickadee on the left and a Nuthatch on the right

It took them quite some time to become aware of them, but now they're pretty much emptying that particular feeder, which has the black sunflower seeds in them, every single day!

They're being watched though:

This Red-tail Hawk is one of a pair that claim this area as their personal territory and small birds are definitely on their menu-list!                                                              

This was what was on our menu list this week:

It's hutspot, a dutch winter-staple, which is basically made up out of (cooked) carrots and onions mixed into mashed potatoes. Usually served with sausages or, as in this case, with an old-fashioned meatball .. and let's not forget the gravy!
Not necessarily 'haute cuisine' but sooooo statisfying!

I also tried my hand at a pumpkin cobbler. It was a very interesting recipe.
After making the dough, pouring it in the pan and covering it with sugar and pecans, the last thing you do before putting it in the oven is pouring 1.5 cup of very hot water over the whole thing!
It definitely looks weird, all that water and those pecans starting to float ..
What happens is that that water moves through the dough while baking, taking the sugar with it and thus creating it's very own caramel sauce. Magic!



Man oh man, was that good! But what's not to like about pumpkin, brown sugar, pumpkin spices and pecans?
Definitely worth making, and repeating!

And that brings me to the last item in this post. Like they say: "last but not least".
Well, it's actually a pretty big thing .. we're moving again!
I know, we were pretty sure we wouldn't have to for a while, a couple of years at least, but unfortunately our current arrangement is not working out the way we thought it would.
It's not because we don't like it but it turns out the 'missus' is not happy with the situation, or with us for that matters, and it became clear we had to leave.

So .. now what? After unsuccessfully trying to come up with a new place to live at various campgrounds (they're either full, or too expensive or our rig is 'too old'!), we contacted our 'old' landlords who previously had offered us a place to stay at their new house in Sheridan if we couldn't find anything.
Guess what ... they were still open to the idea and if everything goes well, we will move over there in a couple of weeks after a site (and utilities) have been created.

Can you say 'relieved'? We're so happy!
So there we go again, new adventures! Like I said, you never know with us ...
always something!

 

Once again Fall has arrived, and as usual I couldn't be happier!
Cooler temperatures (46 F last night!) make for delicious crisp mornings with ribbons of fog hanging low in the hills.
The stores are selling pumpkins in all sizes, there's apple cider and cinnamon lattes and cozy afternoons in front of the fire ... or the little (electric) 'wood'-stove in our case.

As I said, I'm the happiest camper!

                                                    

I unearthed my fall-decorations, they're stored under the bed, which involves James lifting the bed up while I try to determine which plastic bags hold what decorations.
(The pneumatic springs that should hold the bed up by itself are a little too light to stay up by themselves.)
He actually had to repeat that 3 times since every time I thought that that was all, I remembered something else that should be there and he had to do it all over again.
Through the years I might have acquired a little more stuff than I thought?

Any-who, it definitely brightens up the room and never fails to get me in the mood!

On most days, despite the cooler temperatures, the sun still comes out and James cooked up a nice breakfast outside on the BBQ :

               

Thus filled up with a stick-to-your-ribs 'grand-slam' we set out for a little hiking and sight-seeing.
It had been a while since we went exploring and I really needed a change of scenery and some fresh air in my lungs.
For some reason I'd missed the existence of a nice lake, Henry Hagg lake, only about half an hour of where we are at right now and according to the website it had 14 miles of hiking trails all around it!

We took the back-roads, driving through the nice rolling hills of Oregon's Yamhill countryside until we arrived at Scoggins Valley Park, home to said lake, just outside the tiny town of Gaston.
There's no fee to drive through the park but if you want to park and hike you have to buy a $7 day pass.



Henry Hagg Lake is a large multipurpose reservoir, created in 1974 by the Bureau of Reclamation with the construction of an earthfill dam (Scoggins Dam), at the top left of the picture, on Scoggins Creek.

Besides the lake the park also features two boat launching facilities, the trails I read about, an 18 hole disc golf course, and many picnic areas.
 

A nice road loops all around the park with numerous viewing points and access points to trailheads along the way.
We hiked a couple of miles of the trail between the Eagle Point recreation area and Cedar Grove. Since there's only one trail(-loop) you either have to walk the whole trail (14 miles) or backtrack the couple of miles you hike back to where you started from (and where you parked).

Eagle Point Recreation Area

We created our own mini-loop by walking the actual trail through the trees above the lake- shore towards the grove and than walked down to the lake to follow the lake's beach on the way back.

          

Cedar Grove, our turn-around point ..

After taking a little coffee break (of course we brought our thermoses!) we took the car to take the loop-road around the lake to the fishing pier on the other side ...

                   

Where we had some more coffee and watched this furry, brown thing swim steadily through the lake as on his way to .. somewhere?

                                                    

At first we thought it was a Beaver but although they call this area home as well, I'm pretty sure this actually is a Muskrat.
Identification by it's tail would be the easiest but that's not so easy when they're in the water so I'm relying on the fact that when swimming you mostly only see the head of a beaver and it looks sleek and streamlined, whereas the muskrat shows more of it's body and looks much 'fluffier', like a fur-ball with eyes.

All in all, it was a beautiful morning and it was probably a good call we went when we went because it might have been the last of such days for a while .. there's 7 days of rain in the forecast!

           

Time for soups and stews and comfort food, like this huge (instant) pot of 15-bean soup I'd had the foresight to cook on Saturday.

May this Fall be long and beautiful!
Either way, I'm going to enjoy every day of it!

Fall comes with it's own shade of light, doesn't it? It's a warmer, at a lower angle and altogether just more relaxed, more peaceful light .. at least that's how I feel about it.
Some has to do with the fact that my blue peepers do not like bright, harsh light, it makes me feel slightly irritated/anxious and sometimes triggers a headache.

It's a coming and going of ducks and geese all day long at the little lake behind us.
Having a little rest, something to eat and drink and off they go again .. the south is calling!

                                            

                                            

At night we hear coyotes howling quite often lately but I seldom see one during the day.
This one quickly moved through the newly mowed fields in the early morning hours, probably looking for a little snack before calling it a day .. or a night, in this case:

 

                                       

I picked the last of the strawberries last week and decided to donate the plants to the compost heap afterwards.
I've tried my best for 2 years to grow some but for all the time I spent to nurture and water them we get very little in return. Maybe 2 hands full, if at all, so they're history. Been there, done that!

I still have some herbs going, the lemon-mint has done especially well, and my lettuce-mix likes the cooler weather and all of a sudden decided to grow!
I'm waiting a little longer for my sweet potato vines to start dying down, after which I will dig them up. Let's hope there are some!

The days are definitely getting shorter but the weather is still holding. 

The temperatures are just about perfect in the low 70s, and in the evenings we can sit outside to enjoy that 'golden hour' which now pretty much coincides with our 'happy hour' around 5pm ..

We can not really see the sun setting, it hides behind the trees before that, but we can see it's pretty orange glow peeking through the branches ..

I know, it's a short blog this week, another week of 'nothing-much-has-happened', but we're enjoying the peacefulness of a busy summer quieting down ..

It's almost here ... fall!

Fall is creeping up ever so slowly in the fields around us ..

It has been a very quiet week, nothing much has happened and I've only been able to scramble just a few pictures together.

Here's one of some of our yearly visitors around this time .. Canadian geese, getting out of dodge and on their way south!

Their honking calls when flying over and landing in the fields remind me of a Swedish childhood TV-series I used to watch called 'Nils Holgersson", an animated adaptation of the classic story of Nils Holgerson, a naughty boy who is transformed to a very little dwarf together with his pet hamster Carrot but granted the ability to talk with animals. He goes through many adventures, flying with a band of wild geese.

The water level in the little collection pond in the fields behind us is now low enough (because of the drought) that I can walk around it.
It's a little muddy and I have to be careful not to get stuck in the muck but it adds a fun new walk to my repertoire.

I often encounter this little Ringed Plover at the lake's edge all by him/herself. They usually come at least in pairs .. I wonder if it's lost it's partner somehow?

The swallows are still around but are congregating more and more and in larger groups on the electric wires of the utility poles .. I think it won't be long before they take off to their warmer wintering areas in Central and South America.
Many of them will come back right here next year. I've read that about 44 percent of all barn swallows will return to nest in the same area they nested the previous year.

Fall also means the return of  .. spiders!

                                                        
                       

                                                       

Although they're actually around throughout the year, autumn is a time when most spiders begin to mate and the chances of seeing one sprint around the house heighten in the fall, because it's likely the spiders are looking for partners.
Yikes! I'm so not into spiders!
Their webs I grudgingly admire, like the dense funnel-ones above made by Grass spiders, but the creepy, crawly things themself ... brrrr!

And that was all for this week. Like I said, it ain't much but that's life, sometimes it just isn't very exciting .. next time!
Let's have dinner outside shall we?

That was a delicious rib-eye steak by the way!