We're 3/4 into April and it looks like the 'snow-birds' are back in town!
I spotted the first Goldfinch at the feeders yesterday and a couple of days ago I came across this Orange-crowned Warbler down Houser Rd!

Although not quite rare, it's rather rare to see one since they're really tiny and usually spend their time out of sight in the dense undergrowth of the forest.
Despite the color orange being in their name, you won’t likely see much of it, they only show off their orange crown when they get excited because the head feathers raise.

                             

This one actually did show some color. He was singing very loudly and most likely defending his territory against intruders .. me?
(Fun fact; a group of warblers is called a wrench, fall, 'confusion' (ha!), or 'bouquet' (cute!).

A group of Blue Jays, like this jaunty fella, is called a 'band' or a 'party'.
This one was by himself though, but he (band-leader?) got away with a peanut .. for the party?

 

 

I've been working on setting up a few 'raised beds'. I decided to try my luck with a few large plastic totes this time.
They're cheap, lightweight, pretty much indestructible and easy to take with us if (when) we ever move again.
 

I put some holes in the bottom and filled the lower 1/4 with old, dead branches (they'll break down/compost eventually) to save a little bit on soil :

                                   

Yesterday James had to go to town with the truck and took the opportunity on the way home to fill the back with a 5-ingredient bulk soil that he got at Wilco.
For $60 he got a cubic yard, which is a lot cheaper than buying the brand-named soil in bags!

 

I filled all three totes (all kinds of veggies), 2 smaller self-watering ones (rhubarb and zucchini), 4 black 5-gallon plastic plant pots (blue- and rasp-berries), and 2 smaller ones for tomatoes.
I still have a few large (sand) bags left over for future patio-pots and hanging baskets.

I'm dying to plant something but my seedlings in the greenhouse are still tiny and the weather unpredictable. Better to be patient until mid- May or so!

Hard to see but they are there .. that's how small they are, I guess. What hasn't helped is the fact that the whole greenhouse fell over during a huge wind-gust this week.
I saved what I could but lost quite a few and besides that I don't have a clue what some of them are anymore since they all fell in a heap and lost their tags ..

This is the office, looking through the shed-part to the outside ..

             

James continues to work hard on the office in his spare time. We don't have too many appraisals going on at the moment (it's a feast or famine-thing), so there's quite a lot of that .. spare time I mean.

He put the insulation in ..

                           

                            This is the shed-part, looking in to the office part behind that ..

Followed by the inside wall-panels:

                        

The shed also got some shelves, for tools and pantry-stuff:                             

           

He also finally got the BBQ up and running. The bloody thing kept leaking gas but he finally figured out what caused it and fixed it, so all is good.
Let the summer grilling begin!

We christened the season with a nice fat steak .. which we (as usual) split:

A nice sweat potato with all the fixings (butter/sour cream) and a 'fiesta' veggie-medley of corn, peas and spicy fire-roasted tomatoes. Yumm!
Unfortunately we had to sit inside since the weather took somewhat of a turn towards dinner-time with plummeting temps and a cold wind ..

And since we ran unexpectedly out of bread, and I had to make something fairly fast for lunch, I tried my hand at baking Hamburger buns.
They were surprisingly easy to make and came out absolutely perfect. 'Winner, winner chicken dinner'!

OK. Another week done and over with. It's going to be my birthday next week! Time rushes forward at the moment .. probably because we are so busy .

(Singing) Spotted Towhee

Spring really is in full swing right now! More and more fruit trees are flowering, I see lots of birds flying around with nesting materials and they're singing all day long!

                                                             

I found this little blue egg, I suspect it's a Red Robin's:



It either fell out of the nest or one of the many Blue Jays that are around got a tasty little snack ...

It's definitely not this Chikadee's, theirs are much smaller!

            

The blue one on the left is the Robin egg, the tiny creamy white with little brown dots on the right is the Chickadee's.

I'd been on the lookout for Trout Lilies and as usually they snuck(sneaked?) up on me, despite me looking!
Our landlords have a whole bunch of them growing under the oaks (they like shade) next to their house.

That's the lilies on the left of course and the small blue Iris on the right is called Northern Blue Flag, a native of Oregon.

James has worked on installing his office's electric. For such a small building it sure takes a lot of wire!
I guess an office with it's computers, printers, shredder, battery back-ups, lights etc. etc needs a lot of outlets ..

I helped putting the second (and last) layer of paint on the outside. I did the 'cutting' and James did the rest with a big roller.

         

 
I was eager to get the thing painted because I wanted to hang my recently acquired 'Bee-hotel' on its south-east wall!
Although I played around for a while with the idea of getting honey-bees I've decided against them after all. It's quite a complicated endeavor and a lot of work, so I've opted for Mason and Leaf Cutter bees (aka orchard bees) instead.
They won't give you any honey but besides masters of pollinating, they're not aggressive at all and they don't need/use a hive!

Instead they use naturally occurring gaps such as between cracks in stones or other small dark cavities to build their nests or you can provide them with little nesting boxes or things like bamboo tubes/tunnels.

       

I choose this ingenious little 'house' made by Rivajam, that has pre-drilled nesting tunnels covered with a plexy glass viewing panel, so you can safely watch the bee's life cycle.
One side is sized for the common Mason Bee, and the other side is most suitable for smaller native bees like the Leaf Cutter Bee.

How fun is that?

Female bees will lay eggs in the tunnels which they separate from each other with mud, hence the name mason-bee.
Here's a little more about their life-cycle etc. : https://crownbees.com/pages/mason-bee-life-cycle
I was contemplating buying some cocoons to get a head start, but after placing the house on the grill outside, while getting the tools and a few screws to hang it, there was already a bee crawling in one of the openings when I came back! So cool!

While I was working on all that I suddenly noticed a strange little 'bulb' hanging from the underside of our awning:

                                                    
        

                                                                          

I'm afraid this is the start of a Bald-faced Hornet nest and they are not the friendliest of wasps around. They are aggressive and have very painful stingers, so I'm going to remove it before it'll get much bigger. Sorry guys ..

Other than that I've been on a bread-baking spree lately. Having read about the health benefits of sourdough bread (although it has comparable nutrients, the lower Phytate levels mean it is more digestible and nutritious. The pre-biotics also help to keep your gut bacteria happy, and it may be less likely to spike blood sugar levels) I'm baking more and more things 'sourdough' instead of 'normal' wheat breads.
This week I made a sourdough sandwich bread which came out pretty good:

And since we were out of English Muffins, which we eat on a regular base, I made the sourdough version of those as well.
This one was my first try-out, and since all went well I continued to make 10 of them:

                                                          

Not bad, if I say so myself .. a good 'crumb' and a nice 'tang' to them !

OK, that's all she wrote. It's 7.30 pm and it's still light ouside.

What a difference a few weeks make!

 
We had visitors last week, this large group of Elk showed up in the late afternoon!
How cool is that?
This hillside is just visible from 'our' property, if we walk up the little hill to the house, although the zoom of the camera and a pair of binoculars helped a lot of course ..

                                   

                                             

The pictures got a little blurry when I enlarged them ..

No obvious bulls in sight but that's most likely due to the fact that the NW Elk shed their antlers around the middle/end of March, so they're probably all off by now.
They were all gone the next morning .. off to greener pastures!

Easter has already come and gone again. That's the disadvantage of blogging only once a week, I often am a little behind times ..
As usual I decorated some:

Other than that we just relaxed, which means James golfed and I read.
We had a nice piece of Key Lime pie for coffee and I prepared a Lamb-roast in the Instant pot.
I forgot to take pictures .. sigh .. except for this one of the dessert.
Banana cream mousse with 'Peeps':

The weather has been quite good this week and I went for a little walk to the river which is at the bottom/start of the road we're on:

 

It's just a short walk down and I have to cross the main road, but I can actually walk along the water's edge for a little.
It's a nice change of scenery from my usual meadow-views.

                                                  

Lots of horsetails are coming up along the soggy shore and the willows looked especially bright here against the deep blue sky:

No lambs or Easter bunnies around here but I see more and more calves in our neighbor's meadow:

         

I love that these beef-calves can stay with their mothers for quite a long time (6-8 months) whereas milk-cows are separated almost immediately from their mamas.

As I mentioned, so far these first couple of days in April have been fairly nice.
Long stretches of sunshine, although rather on the cool site still, and quite windy in the afternoon.
In the sun and out of the wind, on the lee-side of the RV, we managed to sneak in a few outdoor happy-hours and even a (first of the year) dinner 'al-fresco'!

Soon, we will need an umbrella to sit there or maybe we'll move the table to the other side for the summer.
It was an easy one-bowl affair (left-over lamb with couscous) but dinner is dinner and it was very good!

                                        

This week I made short work of the two smallest puzzles from the box I borrowed from our landlord.
They went fast since they're only 300 pieces each, although the circle-shape involved some weird shaped pieces which made it a little more challenging ..

And that's all for this week. It's April, my birthday-month, and it looks like the weather is slowly getting 'better' as they say.
For me 'better' is actually just like it is right now, maybe just a tad warmer, but not by much! I really hope this coming summer will not be such a hot one, but with global warming becoming more and more apparent I'm afraid there's not much hope for that ..