Blue grapes at Dundee Hills Vineyard. Almost ripe!

(Talking about Dundee hills .. this is their sign, one is the north side and the other the south (sun) side .. that's what a hot summer will do!) 

     

Another week gone .. it's mind-boggling sometimes, where do the days go?
Labour Day came and went, which means 'summer season' has pretty much ended. People are back to work and children back to school.
We 'celebrated', like many others, with a 'last hurray', which, in our case, was a simple BBQ:

Hamburgers with cheese off the griddle, accompanied by Shirley's trusty 'overnight salad'.

Bring it on, says Merl'!

Sleeping of that hamburger ..

He's been a little under the weather lately. Not eating as much as he used too and loosing weight because of it, and often laying hunched up like he's just not comfortable.
His hips have been bothering him for sometime now, and in addition to a few drops of CBD, I've started to give him a 1/4 of a baby aspirin every other day, I hope it will help for any pain he might be experiencing.
There's no denying it though .. our baby's getting old ..

Other than that it has been another quiet week here in Newberg.
James has been working in the weekend on a 'few' (😁) rust-spots on the car:

That thing looks like it got the measles, doesn't it?
Any-who, he's been carefully sanding and spray-painting every single little spot:

It's not done yet, and he'll also do the bumpers after this, but at least he's started!

I've done some cleaning of the rubber around the windows of the RV, but I forgot to take pictures so I have nothing to show for .. oh well, you have to take my word for it I guess!
The weather is still very warm for the time of the year, in the high 80's, but this morning I finally saw a 69F at the very end of the 10 day forecast!!!

Wow, will this summer finally come to an end? Stay tuned to hear more!

 In the meantime .. take it easy!

And once again it's September! Yeah! Probably my most favorite time of the year, since it means it's going to be cooler and ... Fall, you guessed it!
It depends a little on where we are at this time of the year of course, and my hopes were set high this year since we're in Oregon, but of course they're having about the warmest summer on record, and it doesn't look like it's ending anytime soon either!
Just my luck .. oh well ..

Nature is starting to work towards the end of the season though, regardless of the temperatures, and I have to say the nights are getting a little cooler lately ..

 

The sunflowers seeds are ripening and the finches are busy harvesting, trying to fatten up as much as they can ..

Out of my 'office window' I noticed this White-breasted Nuthatch picking it's way down the tree-trunk, snatching up as many little bugs as he can find in the meantime.
 

I have seen his cousin, the Red-breasted, in the same tree too, but haven't been able to get him in front of my camera yet.
Funny fact about these two: the white-breasted goes (mainly) only heads-down the tree, while the red-breasted goes both ways!

             

I'm so done with this never-ending hot summer, this whole week will still be in the high 80s and even low 90s!) so I'm trying my hardest to find some fall on my walks.
Fortunately, most days I'm coming back with at least a little 'sighting', like this Maple which is loaded with winged seeds or 'keys' as they're called.

                     

Remember letting them 'fly' when we were young?

Most of our neighbors have apple or pear trees in their yards and it pains me to see that none of them are being harvested, they're just letting them fall and rot ..

Same for these beautiful blue plums .. such a shame!

                                                                          

Although the grass is not growing anymore due to the drought, some of the hardier weeds are still hanging in there and James decided to give the orchard another mow at the end of the day:

Which is not really a chore of course. Who doesn't like to putz around on his little John Deer?

A little more of a chore would have been to have to clean the carpets in the RV, the truck and the car.
But it so happened that Doug wanted to sell his big truck, and wanted to hire a carpet-cleaner for the job, so we split the cost for one coming out to do the lot!

He did our chairs as well ..

It was nice to finally have all of it cleaned, we'd been talking about it already for a while but never gotten to it .. so far.

OK, that will be all for this week. It's not much, but it's actually nice to finally not have too much happening, we had enough of that (I'm talking about not so good stuff) to last us for a while ..
Time to make dinner. I picked the last of the zucchini and squash and am making 'Maudeens' stew with it. It's a recipe from one of our neighbors from when we were still living in Skyforest, and I make it on a regular base.
Skyforest, boy, that's a while ago ..

Maudeen's stew (Squash, zucchini, onion, potato, tomatoes, Italian sausage and lots of basil)

Finally my morning glory is putting out some flowers ..

It was a slow week this week, not much happening, so I really don't have much to talk about.
Let's see .. oh wait, we washed the RV!

We also treated the roof with a conditioner. Something we should (and have done) do every spring and fall, but there was so much going on this spring that we just didn't have the time.
So, although a little early, we're actually late .. oh, well.

 

We're looking nice and shiny now though, and definitely a lot 'white'-er, and the next thing we'll be doing is cleaning and restoring/renewing some of the caulking around the roof and windows. 
Some of the white paint of the slides, and green paint all around the bottom, need a little touch up as well. All to get us ready for fall!

Which is around the corner of course. Fall, I mean. The nights are finally getting a little cooler and some of the Liquid Amber trees are starting to 'turn':

                   

And the large flock of Red Robins that are hanging out in our yard, are very happily munching away on the bright orange berries of the  Mountain Ash trees ..

                                  

One of our neighbors has been growing these large green pumpkins in the front yard. I always find it interesting that these plants show fully grown fruit and flowers on the same plant at the same time ..

 

On one of my morning walks I was happy to come across this pretty Quail. I haven't seen any around here so far ..

             

Also, for some 'birds of another feather' .. this little flock of chickens ..

Who belong to 'Farmer John', who owns the most adorable, cute little barn and vegetable/flower garden, just down the road from us:

As you can see, he sells the eggs as well!

My vegetable garden is pretty much done producing. I picked the last of the zucchinis and tomatoes (who were ripening really weird, with a still hard top and completely soggy bottom?) and a handful of small bell-peppers.
So far, I'm not too impressed of how things have been growing. Most of it was small or stunted or not producing at all, like every single one of the beans I sowed ..
I don't know if I'm going to do this again next year?

The raspberries in Doug's yard (obviously a late variety) are ripening nicely though!

                

                        

James has been the only one watering them so I don't feel too bad for picking them! Unfortunately we're not too impressed with how they taste, a bit blah, but they're OK on cereal, and I'm freezing some to make preserves or maybe muffins or scones.
They'll be a nice thing to have in the coming winter!

Like I said, the nights, and days as well, are starting to get a little cooler now (Yes!) and Sunday it even rained almost all day (gasp!) so I thought it was a good time to start a new puzzle.
It's one of the three my mom send me for my birthday. This one's a painting by Renoir and a lot more difficult than any of the Wysocki's I usually make.

But I do like the challenge, and it's very pretty!

                 

                      

As of yesterday we were married for 21 years! Can you believe it? Where did that time go?
The only reasonable conclusion has to be, there was apparent international consensus to speed the earths rotation and thus shorten hours ... most likely somewhere overnight, when nobody noticed ..
Any-who, despite all Corona restrictions, some of which (facemasks!) have been re-instated since last Saturday, we tried to celebrate this impressive feat!

First there were kisses, and cards, and than off course there was coffee and pie!

                                        

                                          Chocolate cherry. M-m good!

After work, we had happy hour in the garden, and ordered 'food-to-go' at the very appropriately named Thai restaurant .. "Thai the knot"!                                       

We loaded up the car with some chairs and utensils, picked up the food and drove to Rodger's Landing, a small public park here in Newberg, very picturesquely situated on the shores of the Willamette River.
Perfect for a romantic dinner!

There were nicely sauteed vegetables and a delicious 'house specialty' pork curry.
And while the sun was slowly setting, we toasted (with our glasses of Chai-tea) to our amazing life together so far, and to at least another 21 to come!
What the heck .. let's make that 42!

OK, what else did we do this week?
O, yeah, since the temperatures were still happily (or actually not so happily) into the 90s, we decided it would be a good plan to go to the beach where, due to a marine layer, temps were at least 20 degrees cooler!
Which turned out to be an excellent idea! Look how "cool' it looked!

   We'd brought some coffee (of course) and even had to put on sweaters! O Bliss!

This pretty spot right on the ocean is in the town of Cape Meares, just a couple of miles outside Tillamook.
The previous time we went to the coast, we ended up on Cape Meares itself, which is right around the corner of that rock sticking out there in the ocean on the right ...

                                                        

There used to be a road connecting these two areas, but it is now closed due to unstable soil conditions, which is quite a bummer since it would be such a nice drive to do 'the loop' and end up back in Tillamook.
The area around town is very pretty. There's a huge park at the bay, which is Tillamook Bay, by the way:


   
Where we saw this Bald Eagle, fishing for clams in the mud at low tide ..

      

I hope he knows how much he gets to keep!

All in all, we really liked this little town and where it's situated.
Close to Tillamook and it's golf course, a little out of the way, so not too touristy, right on the ocean with lots of places for me to walk and explore.
We'll definitely keep it in mind for the future.

                              
 

  

Following the shores of the bay back towards Tillamook, you can see the town of Garibaldi, on the other side of the bay .. well, if it wasn't this foggy the view would be better ..



Which is where we ended up when driving further north:

Garibaldi

And a little further, the smaller town of Bay City, where we even checked out some real estate at Bayridge, a gated community, some of which seemed to have good views of the bay:

      

And how about this (5 acres!) lot in between these two towns:

It looks like there certainly are a lot of possibilities here! I think we liked it better than the towns we previously saw to the south of Tillamook. Less touristy ..

Talking about touristy, we finally managed to find a small diner that served seafood in the much busier town of Rockaway Beach, so we stopped to have lunch.
Unfortunately, (seafood) restaurants are hard to find in this area .. oh, well, there has to be something ..

The food was actually not bad, but nothing to write home about, and the decor definitely had seen better days, firmly stuck in the 70s as it was, but as a typical 'Ma and Pa' place it had a certain charm as well. It surely was a place where all the locals went, since everybody seemed to know each other.

We'd actually talked about changing our plans for the rest of our day during lunch, and had decided to drive all the way north to check out the (larger) towns of Seaside and Astoria as well, but when we neared the famous town of Cannon Beach the traffic got really bad and we bailed for home instead!
(Later I read that those towns up north, although pretty and with beautiful beaches, are crazy touristy in the summer, so they might not be where we want to end up anyways. 

But we'll probably go for a visit later in the season or Fall, when things quiet down a little. Just to say 'we've been there' ..)

Gorgeous Cannon Beach!

OK, I think this is it for this week. TGIF (Thank God It's Friday)!
Time for Happy hour! And a pizza!