Look at that, there's some buds with tiny leaves on several of the shrubs around the property!
I'm not quite sure what they are but they look pretty whatever they are!

It's still quite rainy, off and on, and the grounds are saturated and muddy most of the time.
Apparently we have overnight visitors ..



Those are raccoon prints of course. One of these days I'm going to set up a little trail-cam to see what else comes by in the night.
I really don't see anything during the day other than birds, compliments of a certain dog .. she chases everything away .. sigh.

                                                              

Due to the mild winter there's enough food to be found, these Scrub Jays are happy about the many acorns that are laying around ..

Amidst all the grey and wet there was a sparkle of brightness and color in the form of Mardi Gras aka Fat or Shrove Tuesday!
Having spend two winters in Louisiana, we've gotten in the habit of celebrating this wildly festive day, which marks the final day of 'Ordinary Time' before the solemn season of Lent commences on Ash Wednesday.
Mainly because of the food and the parades of course since we're not religious at all.

Portland has it's own Krewe (a club or organization that exists to celebrate Carnival), the Mysti Krewe of Nimbus.
If you know Oregon it's probably not surprising to hear they usually have their parades in the rain:

They don't have any less fun though! We (again) didn't go this year .. maybe next time.

I did bake a King Cake though:

                                          

                                                                                                                              

I use a different recipe every year, but this time I repeated last year's since we agreed it was pretty much the best one ever.
The only thing I changed was to cut the ingredients in half, which gave us a smaller cake that's still more than enough for 2 people.
Even now I froze half of it!

I also baked another loaf of bread:

This time I used my new sourdough starter. It was rising consistently and looked bubbly enough but it's still quite 'young' so I added a little yeast to give it some extra lift.



I also used the bread-machine from start to finish which gives it a lot less time to rise and proof than without but it came out looking really good.
Not very 'sour' yet, but good enough for a first bake!


And if that wasn't fun and healthy enough I also started to grow my own 'sprouts'!

               

I buy them regularly in the stores but I always balk at the high prices.
I mean, come on, $4 for some sprouted seeds .. really!?
It's very easy to do. Just spread some seeds on a paper towel, spray them with water and keep them in the dark for a couple of days.

These still have to grow taller and green up ..

                                 

After the little leaves appear you place them in the light and wait until they have grown to a decent height after you can start harvesting.
They're really good, and healthy, on sandwiches and in salads.
How cool is that?!

We don't have any appraisals at the moment so James is still working on his to-do list.
Here he's modifying the little table that sits between our chairs. Our new chairs are a little bigger than the previous ones so the table had to shrink some ..

                                                                                 
After which it had to be repainted.

The master at work!

Well, that was about it for this week.

I can't believe we're already halfway February ..

Here's a last food-picture of the soup we had on Mardi Gras which of course had to be Gumbo, only our most favorite soup ever!

These trees at the bottom of the slope of the property caught my eye the other day.
Not because there was that much to see, although I think they make a pretty picture with that oak in the middle,  but I realized they are willows and will probably be among the first to start leafing.
I  looked a little closer but no, nothing yet .. oh well, it's only February of course.

The weather is much better at the moment, warmer (45-50F) and with a lot less rain!
I couldn't help picking up a little pot of Daffodils while grocery-shopping the other day. For $1.98 the cheery yellow lifts your spirits instantly, doesn't it?
Spring is coming!

                                                                

I also 'stole' (with permission from the landlord) some daffodil bulbs from the oak grove that were coming up in the wild and planted them in pots.
Some seem to be 'duds', as in not showing any flowers but I think I have a few that will.
                                                                                               

There's also a patch near the fence where there used to be a mobile home where there's a whole bunch of Daylillies coming up.
Apparently they're the tall, orange ones, which I happen to like, so I dug some up as well (in the front, left pot ). Fingers crossed they're going to flower!

Still, we have a lot of cloudy days as well when we barely see the sun and everything is just wet and grey ...

                   

We have ducks visiting us almost every day now. I wonder if they're checking out safe places to make a nest and raise a brood this Spring.
Usually there are a couple of Mallards, a Merganser couple (or two) and one lonely Buffelhead:

Isn't he gorgeous?

Work is a little slow at the moment and James is using this down-time to check off some items on the 'to-do' list.
Here he's working on remodeling the computer-stand which he uses when he works on the computer while sitting in his chair.

We changed chairs recently, funny how you always sit in the same chair, and now it didn't quite 'fit'.
Fortunately he's rather handy ... yeah, that's an understatement.
He was also seen like this .. 'in the hole':

Fixing a pull-out drawer ...

I've renewed my interest in baking bread and more specifically baking 'healthier' bread.
Since gluten are not very good for you I'm trying out some different flours, there are so many different ones to choose from now!

This one's made from oat-flower:

                                             

It doesn't rise as well as wheat-flower (since it has no gluten) and it is a little more crumbly, but it came out pretty good and it tastes great!

                                              

Next I made a Beer-bread from a recipe Serena gave me. It does have normal flour in it so it's not better than any other bread, but it doesn't use normal yeast, it uses the beer's yeast instead, which is kinda fun!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

The main problem I have with baking bread is that my oven, which is a convection oven, doesn't want to heat up higher than 375F and even on that setting it doesn't even reach 350 in most cases.
I don't know why and we tried to find out but so far we haven't so it's something I have to deal with. It's fine for cookies, cakes, oven-dishes and all that but bread does much better with higher heat.

So ... a new (actually old) appliance made it's way (back) into our household.
Drum-roll please .. may I present .. the Bread-maker:

                

I used to have one but when we moved into the RV it had to go, it just took up too much space.
This one is a much older model but I scored it for $10 on Marketplace and picked it up right here, just outside of town which was very convenient!
I've done some research on this particular brand and it appears to be 'an oldie, but a goodie' as they say.
People describe it as a very reliable workhorse, able to handle the toughest dough and pretty much indestructible. Some people have them already for 25 or 35 years!

 

I gave it a good cleaning and proceeded to make a cinnamon-raisin bread that same afternoon. It did a perfect job and it is delicious!
Now to get used to those round slices!
(By the way, doesn't this model remind you of something/someone? Hint: Star-Wars.
Yes .. R2D2! I never knew that robot could make bread as well!) 😂

Next up: Sourdough! Off course! Which is a little more complicated.

First line of action .. 'growing' a starter:

         

This is Day 5. It's alive and bubbling and starting to double in size in about 4 to 6 hours.
It smells slightly sour and a little fruity which is all perfect and just what it should do. So far so good!
Probably another 5 days or so to go before I can use it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Other than that it's been a quiet week. Between researching all things 'bread-y' I finished another one of Serena's puzzles. Those of the 'bits-and-pieces' puzzle pieces.

This one was a lot easier so I'm hopeful that I can do a few more like this.
We'll see ..

 

Finally, finally, after weeks and weeks of rain, we finally had some dry and even sunny days this week!
James immediately went golfing of course and I had coffee outside for the first time this winter!

It felt so good, a little bit of sun on my face!

                                               

Since James was up to speed with his appraisals, and we didn't have any new ones coming in just yet, we took advantage of this beautiful weather and drove to the coast for the day.
Lincoln city is only 45 minutes away from us now, a nice scenic drive on Hwy 18 through the Van Duzer Forest State Scenic Corridor, part of the coastal mountain range, over the 800' pass and down to the beach in Lincoln city.

We'd decided to do a little 3 mile hike, just north of town, the Knoll loop, which promised beautiful scenery through coastal forest, fields and a final view of the ocean:

            

Walking counter-clock wise the first part of the hike goes through a woodland of mixed forest (hemlock, spruce, and alder):



As usual for Oregon, the trees are covered in moss and the ground with ferns ..

The trail is fairly level in the beginning but starts to climb steeply fairly soon and we had to stop a couple of times to catch our breath.
About halfway the loop we came across a sign for 'Gods Thumb' which I'd read about and supposedly takes you to an amazing viewing point.
It adds another mile or so to the trail but we decided to go for it.

We passed an open meadow where a doe and her (older) fawn were grazing against the tree-line:



                                                    

And this Kestrel, resting on the very tippety-top of a spruce-tree. As you can see there were a lot of tiny flies swarming in the air ..

                    

And finally we reached 'God's Thumb':




The Thumb is part of a basalt dike formed during the late Eocene. The small cove below was created when the dike was breached and wave action began to rapidly gouge out the much softer siltstones and claystones of the Nestucca Formation, which the dike had been protecting.

As you can see the trail from here drops steeply down the edge of a cove. We chose not to climb the Thump itself, it looked way to steep for me, but if you look closely there are a few daredevils at the end/top ..

Time for a coffee-break, while admiring this amazing view from the safety of the little meadow in front .. and yes, I'm sitting quite close to the edge there ..

                               

                                      

To the north you look across the mouth of the Salmon River to Cascade Head and to the south to Lincoln City.

 

After a while we made our way back to the main loop and continued down the other side of the hill from there (thank goodness!) towards the grassy crest of a lower ridge, known in these parts as The Knoll, a Lincoln City Open Space.



From here you have an expansive view to the south that includes Devils Lake and the spread of Lincoln City.
Apparently local elk bed down in this meadow at night.

                  
                                                                             Devils Lake

From here it was supposed to be a easy and fairly quick way back to our car if it wasn't for the fact that we got lost and ended up walking another mile or 2 through a forested neighborhood before finally making it back.
Phew! We were bot feeling our hips and knees and feet! I guess we're not spring-chicken or in the best shape anymore!

We felt we deserved some comfort food after this and went for a greasy meal at this 60s diner:

                                             

 

A nice 'Elvis' hamburger and a blackberry milkshake put us right again.
No calories here (even though we shared)! 😂

A drive to the ocean where we looked out over the beach for a while was all we could manage after this ..

It was a beautiful day and we were glad we went. It had been a while since our last outing and it was good to be out in the fresh air and the warm sunshine for a while.

Next week's forecast ... rain!