Although it has gotten a little cooler again this last week we still continue to have reasonably good, and most importantly dry, weather!

That Clematis up above is in it's third year now, and after having no flowers at all in it's first and only one last year, it opened five enormous, beautiful flowers last week!
It badly needs re-potting but I'll wait until it's done flowering. I'm too scared I'll kill it now!

                              

We've been extremely busy all week! We cleaned the outside of the RV (well, James did) the car and even the truck got a thorough once-over.
Living in Oregon, especially during the winter, makes everything end up looking green around the edges, compliments of the rapid growing mold!

            

James worked a little on covering up some ugly pipes ..

He also replaced the screen of our front screen-door, which Merlin had sharpened his nails on a little too often and was starting to let mosquitos in.
He decided to spray-painted the door as well since it showed a lot of scratches and busted off paint:

    

                           

And while he was at it, he also painted the door-frame .. why not .. It looks amazing, like a new door!

To celebrate all the clean- and tidy-ness with some extra color I bought a couple of hanging baskets to hang from the front awning:

As every year I'd balked at the high prices for them, but look what I found in the 'sale' corner at Walmart:

                                                     

Now that's more like it! I had to clean them up a little, pinch off the spent flowers and brown leaves (I suspect they weren't watered enough), but they spruced up real nice and I see little leaf and flower buds everywhere! Score!!

Here's a few wild-flowers I came across on my walk:

      

These are Cat’s Ear’s or Furry Mariposa.
I'd never seen them before, aren't they pretty? Apparently they grow from bulbs. I might go back later this year to see if I can dig a few up ..

     

And I think these are called 'Golden Alexander' or Zizia Aurea if you want to get all fancy about it. Not that they are very fancy at all, they're very common, ordinary wildflowers here in the Pacific North-west.

Not too many 'new' birds this week as well. Just some ordinary 'birds on a wire' .. like this Scrub Jay:

And a little Tree Swallow, preening his feathers:

 

Some say birds on a telephone wire predict the coming of rain. I know they often stop flying to wait out bad weather, but there wasn't any storm coming in either so who knows.

Google says "The electric current flowing through the wires makes them a tad warmer than the surrounding air. When the bird sits on the power line, it feels the heat on its two feet, helping it warm up."
I guess they're getting a little buzz out of it .. sort of a bird's 'crack'!


 

Last but not least .. the office is pretty much done!
The wallpaper is up:

              

 

And some of the office equipment is in!

I must say .. it's a very pretty office!

Which is not a minute too early because we really needed that office to be done by now.
Reason being: my sister, and her partner in crime, are coming for a visit next week and we need the space to use as an extra bedroom!
In fact they'll be staying in the RV and James and I are going to sleep in the office and with the office now out of the RV, James will still be able to get some work done as well while they're here.

We're so excited! My sister has visited once, while we still lived in California, but never since, so it will be nice to show them some of Oregon.

They'll be staying for 3 weeks so plenty of time! I can't wait!

                                                                          

 

   

The Red Clover is flowering and the hills all around us are slowly coloring a crimson red!
The contrasting greens of the grapevines and hillsides make the red even more brilliant.

Apparently Oregon is the source of world class clover seed. Who knew?
The bees sure appreciate it!

Most trees are fully leaved by now. Even some of the oaks on our property, who were extremely late, are now looking like they're almost 'done'.

                

I found some patches of California Poppies.
This picture was taken in the early morning when they hadn't opened fully yet. I might have to go back to catch them at a better time.

Every now and then I walk down to the river. I used to be able to follow a small trial made by the local wildlife but the grasses and weeds are getting almost too abundant, and tall, to do so right now.

One of the tallest weeds are these Giant Hogweeds:

                                

Although very pretty, with their large leaves and lacy flowers, the combination of sap on the skin and exposure to sunlight can produce painful, burning blisters within 48 hours!

I might have to give up on this particular walk until they disappear in late summer. 

Still more 'new' birds are arriving at my feeders!
These Black-headed Grosbeaks have been around for a few weeks now:

But their cousins, the Evening Grosbeaks, arrived only a few days ago!

 

Isn't he gorgeous?

In the meantime, James has almost finished the office!
The floor went in in record time due to the extra wide 'planks' ( LVP, Luxury Vinyl Flooring):

                     

And this morning he finished the roof!




Bret, our landlord, helped to lay the rubber. He's a roofer so he knows what he's doing!

Some of the 'flashing' went up as well. Again, with help of Bret, who cut and bend the metal with his professional tools/machines.
He had a lot to do himself so he didn't have time to make all of the pieces yet but the rest of them can be put on later.
So, we're almost there. A (fortunately shallow) ditch needs to be dug to lay a hard-line for Internet from the RV to the office and the wallpaper has to go up on the walls above the 'wainscoting', but after that we can start to move things over.
Yahoo!

Last, but not least, another food-picture! (lunch, to be precise but who wants to know?)
This is not so much about the food though but more to show off the nice red patio umbrella I bought!

It's a 9 footer and can tilt as well, and hopefully will allow us to have breakfast lunch and dinner in that spot right next to the patio where we have our sitting area.
Since our color-scheme (as if we have any) for the outdoors is mostly greens and blues I thought the red gives it a nice pop of color.
I bought a second one for the other side of the RV where we have the afternoon and evening sun.
So far I love the look. Let's hope they'll block (most of) the sun as well!

(Btw, having suffered a sticker-shock about the price of umbrella-bases in the stores, I was tickled-pink to score two of them on Marketplace for only $35 together!)

 


We've had a beautiful week of unusual sunny and warm weather. Already a little too hot for my liking actually!
Temperatures soared into the low 80s and we turned the AC's on for the first time this year!

                                                                        

Trees and shrubs are flowering everywhere!
We are surrounded by Hawthorns, which have nasty little thorns, but they have their short moment of glory in early Spring when they are absolutely beautiful!

                                                                         

  

Amidst all the white of the hawthorns there's the cheerful yellow of the Scotch Broom as well, considered a class B noxious weed in the US but 'native' in Western Oregon:




And here and there the first flowers of the wild Nootka roses, another native of the Pacific Northwest, are starting to open their sweet, almost cinnamon scented, flowers.

                                                       

      

They spread by suckers and I dug up a few from below the tree-line of the property and transferred them to my little pond-side wild-flower border.
I think I butchered quite a lot of roots in doing so, so we'll have to see if they'll survive ..

The Camas lilies are  flowering all around the ponds:

And look what showed up on one of those beautiful, sunny mornings?

Another surprising appearance was made by a couple of Acorn Woodpeckers!

                              

I used to see them all the time when we lived in the San Bernardino mountains in California but haven't come across them in all the 10 years we were traveling, or even here in Oregon since we've been here! 
They're very loud and obnoxious birds and there was no mistake in identifying them with that clown-faced color pattern.

While traipsing through the meadows I flushed out this pretty little butterfly:

It's a Fender’s blue butterfly, native to and found only in the Willamette Valley.
Once thought to be extinct but which has returned in strong numbers in the last couple of years!
Conservationists say the butterfly is an important pollinator in the Willamette Valley and that its return marks an improvement in prairie biodiversity and health.
Cool! 

Let's see, what else? I baked a, almost perfect, sourdough sandwich-bread:

I forgot to score the top so it burst a couple of 'rogue' cracks at the top but other than that it was a very good and tasty bread.
It definitely had that coveted sour 'tang' it should have.

                                                    

The office is looking more and more finished! James painted the ceiling an off-white and the walls (partly) and door a moss-green: 

   

The upper part of the walls above the counter and 2 of the side walls are going to be wallpapered with a rustic wooden plank pattern!

And of course now the weather is heating up we used the BBQ for some of our dinners this week 

Hamburgers (plant based) with potato salad and corn on the cob.
Summer is coming!                                                     

 
It's the first week of May and the canola fields around us are flowering.
A small number of farmers in Oregon grow canola/rapeseed for the oil in its seeds and canola helps “clean” fields of weeds that are difficult to kill in grass seed crops as well.
(There's a little bit of a controversy about this crop due to fears that it will interfere in the cultivation of related seed crops like mustard or broccoli and there's actually a 500-acre limit on canola farming in the Willamette Valley).
I sure do love to see those bright yellow fields!

The Red Clover is also starting to bloom. Soon the hills all around us will color red as well:

Our landlord grew them last year and some seeds that were left in the ground after plowing them over are coming up voluntarily this year. The bees will love them!

Talking about bees, there has been some activity in my 'hotel', eggs have been laid and tunnels plugged up.
You can actually see a (leaf-cutter) bee in one of the tunnels here:

                                  

And finally we had our first deer show up!

They appeared at the forest's edge on the other side of the pond we're on and moseyed their way to the small group of trees to the right of us.
Coco, out landlord's dog, obviously didn't see (or smell) them so they were safe for the moment.

 

 

We'd heard they're around but because of the dog we hadn't seen any at all since the time we'd arrived here.
I think it's a doe with her 1 year old fawns. So cool!

 

I posted last week that the first Gold-finches were back. Well, I think now the whole family  has arrived!

              

Holy smokes! It's an invasion!

                                                 

They like the black sunflower seeds and sometimes nibble a little from the mixed ones but their favorite are the thistle seeds.
In which they are fortunate since they're the only ones eating them!

James hung the bat-box in the tree for me:

                  

We didn't want to put screws in the tree so we attached 2 rubber straps around the trunk, bend the hardware that came with the box and clasped them over/on the strap.

                                               

 

Et voila! The bat-hotel is hereby opened!

We can't quite see the entrance from the RV since it had to be hung facing somewhere between N-and SE, but we'll just place a few viewing chairs there to see them emerge in the evening.

Hopefully ...

                       

On Sunday afternoon we went for another performance at the Gallery theater in Mcminnville.
We had tickets for the matinee-show of 'Anesthesia, the musical':

According to their website: This dazzling show transports its audience from the twilight of the Russian Empire to the euphoria of Paris in the 1920s, as a brave young woman sets out to discover the mystery of her past. Pursued by a ruthless Soviet officer determined to silence her, Anya enlists the aid of a dashing con man and a lovable ex-aristocrat. Together, they embark on an epic adventure to help her find home, love and family.

Despite a little so-so start, we soon got drawn into the story and we enjoyed the fast paced  and fun dialogues, the beautiful costumes and wonderful voices of the lead singers.
Well done again! We'll be back!

Meanwhile, at the ranch, the counters for the office arrived and James cut them at the right length .. as in: measure 12 times, cut only once!

Perfect!

The large one is going to be his desk and the small one the coffee/microwave counter.

That 'doorway' to the left into the shed is eventually going to disappear (more about that next time).

He spend a couple of days staining and varnishing and they're looking really nice.

Next up: painting the walls.

Today is Cinquo de Mayo, and it's about time to heat the Tamales I bought.
I know, I took the easy way out, but I'll fix a salad and make some guacamole! Flan for dessert, also store-bought (gasp!), but not bad at all.
Oh well ... it's Sunday, which is when I try not to cook, or at least make something easy.

So .. Feliz Cinco de Mayo to you! Fiesta ‘til you siesta!