Time for a day at the beach! 

                                     

And this is why!


 

Yes, I turned 65 yesterday! OMG, can you believe it ? Sixty-five!
I'm old! I'm a dinosaur!
James gave me that card ... jeez, hon' .. just rub it in, will ye!

               

My mum send me those two puzzles. They look like fun! Paris and what looks like a terrace somewhere in the Mediterranean .. one of these days, I'll go back there!

But for now we went to the beach, just south of Lincoln City, a small area called Taft.
Of course we brought coffee and of course there was cake! 
Two humongous slices of real Birthday-cake this year!

       

I usually bake some kind of a pie but this year I treated myself by not having to do a thing.
James made breakfast and the pie was made by Target! 

It was overcast but not cold and we found ourselves a nice peace of driftwood to sit on.
The view was the best. How I miss the ocean ...

After eating waayyyy to much cream, we went for a few short hikes at various nearby developed trails which allow several routes of discovery throughout the wetlands around the bay. 

                                  

These wetlands consist of rich tidal marshes, mudflats and spruce-hardwood swamps which are crucial habitats for salmon, migratory waterfowl, and wading birds.

     

Salmon berry and Red Elderberry

           

These were all very nice, easy walks. We didn't see a lot of wildlife but we spotted quite some spring-flowers and shrubs.

Getting hungry we drove back to the bay and had a late lunch at Mo's Seafood and Chowder, a well-known Fish restaurant here in Oregon which opened in 1948 and is famous for it's clam chowder.

It offers beautiful views of the Siletz Bay and the Pacific Ocean, especially if you can grab a seat at the window like we did:

                                                            

Of course we had the chowder as well as rock-fish tacos, coleslaw with bay-shrimp and I splurged on an oyster shooter with hot sauce!

                        

Afterwards, while we were in the neighborhood, we decided to drive inland a bit, following the Siletz River, and check out a few RV Parks.

Although we're not really looking to move right now, and if we were, we would probably not go into an RV Park again, but who knows, we might be interested in buying property here in the future. It's such a beautiful area:

It's a beautiful area with lots of plant and wildlife, while the river contains the greatest diversity in fish species on the Oregon Coast, as it contains all types of salmon species, as well as white sturgeon!

We came across a small herd of Roosevelt Elk:

The campgrounds were all quite nice, all of them had beautiful river views, but what we didn't quite realize, or forgot about, is the fact that the problem with the river that close means that most of them flood during the winter!
No wonder that many of the houses we saw along the road were built high on stilts!

I guess we'll have to re-think about this living-at-the-river plan ... we've been through several floods when we lived in Louisiana and we'd rather not go through that again.

The rest of the week went by rather uneventful as usual.
The weather has been quite nice with temps in the sixties and mostly dry except for a little rain on Tuesday.
According to our landlord it's already getting too dry out there again. Not good for his newly planted Christmas trees!

     

'My' wild birds, like these House Finches, are looking a bit more colorful these days. 
It's a natural 'thing', all to impress the ladies!

I've seen some Goldfinches come by to check out the feeders but I didn't have their favorite seeds out yet so they quickly moved on.
I hope they'll be back because I since than brought out the Thistle seed, their food of choice.

This pair of ducks sort of live at the pond and often look for spills underneath the feeders.
I guess they enjoy seeds as well .. 

                                     

And I finally finished this puzzle. For some reason it took me a while although it's not a particular difficult one.
I just didn't feel like puzzling much as of lately:

I'm not reading a lot either, none of the books I started have been of much interest to me ..  
It might be the weather as well, too cold to start all kind of summer things and too warm to stay inside all the time.
Oh well, I usually just give in to being sort of bored, it kinda serves a purpose as well and I know it will change again ...
This is what Google has to say about it:

Yes, boredom has a significant purpose : it acts as a functional signal that prompts the brain to seek new goals, enhances creativity, and drives personal development. It moves our minds away from overstimulation, activating the the default mode network to encourage self-reflection, creative thinking, and problem-solving. 

There you go ... what he says!

'Aprilletje zoet geeft ook nog weleens een witte hoed'

This dutch saying translates to a little rhyme which means: “little April sweet sometimes has a white hat” (of course this rhymes in dutch but not in English).
The white hat is a metaphor for snowfall, although in this case it was hail and good size hail at that!

                                           

'Unfortunately', nowadays it happens only rarely. 
It is clear that temperatures continue to rise. Until the year 2000, there fell snow on two to four days in April but since then, that has become much less frequent. 

Apparently Mama Osprey survived the onslaught of this cold front and still sits bravely on her eggs (I presume) on top of her telephone-pole perched nest:

 

It was a busy Saturday again at the pond, lots of families trying to catch one of the legal-size, and sometimes larger "jumbo"or brood, rainbow trouts the Oregon Department Department of Fish & Wildlife stocks the pond with in early Spring.

Not too many birds are around on these busier days but I found a few I hadn't seen for a while, like this Wigeon:

     

     
                          And a few Common Mergansers ..

My bird-feeders back home are wildly popular, there's a whole flock of White Crowned sparrows and House Finches watching my every move in the morning when I walk around the RV to fill them.

                                                            

They're mostly waiting for me to scatter a few handfuls in the border and grass around the feeders which makes for much easier picking of course, especially for the Mourning Doves who cannot manage to hang from feeders.

And yes, these cheeky (literary) Chipmunks have caught on as well and hoover around the grounds trying to stuff as many seeds in their cheeks as fast as possible!

Yes, I see you!

So yes, besides that sudden hail-shower, which lasted only 10 minutes of so, the weather has been fairly good. The wind makes a lot of difference from day to day since when it blows it can be rather cold and when not it's quite pleasant.
Yesterday the temps reached almost 70F and today it's going to be even warmer!

But just so we won't get too excited about it all, the forecast is for 4 rainy days in a row, so ha .. Oregon is not done yet!

 

Here's a Variegated FritillaryButterfly just to show warmer days will be coming .. 
... eventually.

Only one more week until my Birthday. How on earth did that happen?

Almost every spring I try to snap a picture of a bird singing it's heart out .. just because it's spring and the sun is shining and of course you have to establish your territory and impress the females ..
Just for fun I looked through some I made in previous years:

I guess I succeeded more times than I thought!

This time I got the Song Sparrow above.

The Song sparrow is well named as both male and female have a variety of songs that may be heard at any time of year, and juvenile birds begin to sing full songs within two months of hatching.
The exact song varies by region and individual, and individuals will often sing multiple distinct songs, but apparently they always follow a discernible pattern: two to four introductory notes, followed by a trill, and then a jumble of quick notes and/or trills.
This one did exactly that!

The shrub he was sitting in was full of buds which were very visible against that perfectly blue sky:

These little clusters of small, white flowers on long, green vines are showing up everywhere alongside the roads over here:

                                                                   
                                                                   

Which, according to my plant-app, is Oregon Big-root, also known as coast man-root or old-man-in-the-ground, a native perennial found east of the Cascades. 
It is characterized by fast-growing vines, spiky, inedible, cucumber-like fruit, and an enormous, deep-seated, bitter, and fleshy tuber that can weigh over 100 kg! (hence the name).

                      

I also looked for Easter lilies in the oak forest here on the property and lo and behold I found some!
They're a little late for Easter but since that happened very early this year they're probably right on time!

The weather has been quite good all week, mostly sunny, although off and on there have been some occasional rain showers. 

It's typical Spring-weather I guess, notoriously volatile and quick to change, characterized by a constant battle between lingering winter cold and incoming summer warmth.

Since the temperatures are mostly over 55F now, I've re-hung my bee-house (for leaf-cutters and orchard bees) on one of the sunny mornings.

      

When I peeked later that afternoon I saw that they'd already found it and had started laying eggs! So cool!

The warmer weather is bringing them out already and the fruit trees are starting to blossom so they're good for food!

I'm also starting to see some butterflies. This very battered looking California Tortoiseshell landed for a few seconds next to the barn. 
Only just long enough to get a fast shot of it. Butterflies are hard to photograph, they don't sit still very long:

Despite the (almost) summery weather I cooked some dutch 'stampot', a stick to your ribs kinda comfort food mostly eaten in winter with kale or carrots and onions.
This version is made with what the dutch call 'andijvie' which is impossible to find in the US.

                 
 
Escarole or Curly Endive (Frisée) comes the closest but if I ask for it over here I'm met with either a blank stare or they try to correct me by saying 'oh, you mean Belgian 'Endive' ... eh, no, I don't. You're sure? Yes I'm sure ... really .. sigh.
Any-who, I actually used curly lettuce, you put it in raw, which makes for a nice, crunchy, lighter, more spring-like dish.

And that's all for this week I think.
Unfortunately we're in for some cooler, and wetter, weather for the next couple of days.
Oh well .. it's only early days .. it'll get better eventually .. we hope.

    

It has been a beautiful week so far, in more ways than one but I'll come back to that later.
The weather has been great, very Spring-like, with several beautiful warm days, or afternoons I should say, in the 60s which, as usual, turned into clear, cool nights.
When I walked to the pond early on Saturday, the sky was blue, the sun was out and I found quite some people out already fishing along its shores.

I came upon the first Bluebells:

And a Red-breasted Sapsucker:

                                                            

Sapsuckers are named for their habit of drilling rows of shallow wells in shrubs and trees, and then lapping up the sap with their brush-tipped tongues. 
Many species of insects, birds (especially hummingbirds) and mammals use the sap-wells to supplement their own diets before flowers bloom. 

Easter, despite being very early this year, was especially warm, it got up to 74F (23C) around here today!
As usual we had a a relaxing day while munching our way through some of our traditional food and drinks ...

        

                                    

I made a cheesecake this year ... from a box! I know, it's terrible, but I'd been very busy all week and I just didn't have much energy left so 'Jello' came to the rescue with its 'no bake cherry cheese-cake'.
Oh well, it was good enough .. next year I'll do better.

In the afternoon we drove over to the Buell Grange, a 10 minute drive, to take a look at their Easter food and crafts market:

Unfortunately it was a quite disappointing affair, there was really nothing of (our) interest. 
We'd been there before at their Farmers market and weren't too impressed about that either so I don't think we'll go again. 
Oh well, it got us off our butts for a while and we had a little Easter Sunday-drive through the countryside.

As I mentioned, it was a rather busy week during which I had several important things to take care of.
The most important event was a trip to Portland for a visit to the pop-up Consulate of the Netherlands to renew my passport.
Every couple of years the San Francisco Consulate makes a tour to several cities along the West-coast, staying for a couple of days and taking care of the usual things you have to go to a consulate for.
Not wanting to have to go all the way to San Franciso, I had been watching their website like a hawk for almost a year now, hoping that they would come before my passport expires at the end of April.
Appointments are limited and go fast but I was very lucky to grab a spot!



First order of business was to make photos. The dutch apparently are very critical about the requirements and according to them there's only one photographer that makes the correct ones so that's where you have to go.
They only work through appointments so I'd made one, leaving ample time before I had to be at the consulate.
Everything went very smoothly so ... enough time for coffee!

                                                               

We ended up at Courier Coffee which turned out to be the cutest, funky place.
Their coffee is freshly roasted somewhere else in the city and is than delivered daily by bike (!), hence the name 'courier', to their little coffee-shop.
They've been around for a long time and have not changed much in their concept or shop in forever as you can see at the outdated decor and the music coming from an-honest-to-god authentic, ancient record player!

                         

The coffee is excellent though and the pastries, only two varieties, freshly baked and delicious!

                         

Their clientele is definitely of the more eccentric sort and although we're not quite falling in that category we loved the ambience and relaxed 'vibe'.
Not surprisingly these two posters were stuck to the door:         

               

Good for them!
We saw several businesses in the city that had similar ones posted in the windows.

Soon it was time to move to the main attraction of the day.
The building where the consulate had rented office space to do business while in town turned out to be an ultra-modern concept:

                                                         

WeWork is a global real estate company providing flexible, shared and private workspaces, along with virtual offices and meeting rooms for individuals and teams. 
Headquartered in New York City, it operates roughly 600 locations worldwide, offering tailored, turnkey office solutions with amenities like high-speed internet and community events.

                  

Again, everything went ultra-smoothly and before I knew it was all done! Didn't take much longer than 10 minutes! James actually thought there was a problem when I emerged so quickly.
I had of course painstakingly gathered and copied all necessary documents and checked everything about a hundred times just to be sure and I guess it paid off!



They even gave me some souvenirs!
The passport will be sent to me, which can take about 6 weeks, but if I had to travel for some reason I do have my American passport, so I'm good either way! 

       

We didn't stay in the city for long, I'm not a shopper and it was cold and drizzled a little so we weren't interested in staying much longer.

                                                   

We had lunch at our favorite Indian Place in Sherwood and were home before traffic.
The day could not have gone much better and I was very happy and relieved to have it taken care of!
It guess it had stressed me more than I realized.

Here's a nice sunset to relax:

Peace out man!