This is a picture of the little lake I came across when taking one of my first walks behind our new property.
Exploring our new surroundings is one of my favorite things to do after a move, and so far I'm liking what I see.

The neighbor's property next door used to be a nursery, where they grew a large variety of plants and trees, but since they moved to a larger area they are renting out the land to someone who uses it to grow a different crop each year.
Last year it was garlic, which you can still smell when the wind comes from a certain direction, and this year it's clover and grass/hay.
A small pathway is left at the sides, perfect for walking around the fields ..

After about 20 minutes I reached the lake (from the picture above) and another 10 minutes later, here's looking back at it from the other side ..

Eventually I'll reach the road we're on, Kings Grade, that brings me back to our place, which you can just make out there in the distance ..

Besides spotting the Canadian geese there in the lake above, I was accompanied for a while by a couple of loudly screaming Red-tailed hawks who were flying quite low over my head, circling and swooping  ..



In one of a couple of small groupings of tall trees I passed I discovered the reason why ...

I'm not sure if this is one of the adults or a rather large chick,
almost ready to fledge?

 

But lets get to the most exciting news of this post already ... THIS happened!

              

Yes! He passed! And on his first try, whereas statistically 1 in 3 people fail!
I'm so proud of him and we're so happy that this whole ordeal is finally behind us!
No more studying! Yahoo!
And to top it off, only 8 hours later an e-mail confirmed that his license was issued, which usually takes 2-3 days. (He'll get a hard copy over the mail in a couple of days)

So, time to celebrate! Open the champagne! Have some deviled eggs!
Which we did ...

           


But, no rest for the wicked, James already worked on some of our bartering hours by doing a little welding on a broken down lawn mower ..

    

A little grinding of the welds and some touch up paint and it was good to go!

We've also worked on 'bushwhacking' an area at what is going to be our permanent spot, which is overgrown with ivy and blackberries:

               

Believe it or not but I've actually done most of it (James was still studying at the time), but there was nobody around to take a picture so James is of course taking all the credit ..

And look what I found at Home Depot the other day:                                                   

                                                       

I was looking for a hanging basket to hang from my awning as I do every year but I just couldn't get over the $29.95 price-tag! I know, I'm a cheapskate, but seriously? 

Bimart had some for $19.95 just before Mother's-day but they were sold out by the time I could get there.
So, when we ended up at Home Depot for something else, I wandered over to their plant section, only to find the same $29.95 prizes.
But than a very friendly cashier pointed out a rack with priced down plants that didn't look that good anymore, or were a little past their prime ... for $5! Ha!
I picked one of the best looking ones (and another $16.95 pot of petunias for the same $5), and after deadheading them a little after I got home they turned into fine looking plants! Score!

Well, that was about all for now. Here's a last pic of James making pancakes and bacon (and eggs to follow) for breakfast.
The weather is absolutely perfect at the moment with temps around 74-82 so the BBQ gets a lot of use again!

            

It's been a while since I let 2 whole weeks slip by in between posts, but we have an excuse .. we moved!
We're all set up in our new, albeit temporary, site, as you can see in the picture above.
In a week or 3 or 4, we move in our permanent position behind the barn, which will be about where the car is parked at the moment.

It took us a couple of days of slowly dismantling everything we had collected and placed around and under the RV in our 'old' place and packing up the trailer (the first of three loads) we borrowed from our landlord:

On the day of our move we left early for our 8.20 appointment at DMV.
Our RV still wasn't registered in Oregon and since they want to see the vehicle 'in person' we thought this was the perfect time to get it done.

We'd picked the DMV in Sherwood which has a big enough parking lot for our rig and we'd made an appointment, which makes a big difference in how long you have to wait in line.
Everything went smooth as can be, as well as the 30 minute drive from there to our new site just north of Newberg.

You've got to love an easy move like that!

 

So here we're sitting, alongside the barn, for the next couple of weeks at least.
The reason we're not in our designated spot yet is that the county has not given us permission to park there permanently .. yet.
Mobile homes are permitted and even tiny homes or small cabins but RV's are sort of frowned upon and you have to jump through all sort of hoops to get it approved.
Fortunately our new landlord knows somebody who knows somebody so we hope it will be resolved soon. Were keeping our fingers crossed.

And guess what happened?
After arriving we set down for a cup of coffee when James checked his cellphone .. to find a message from Oregon State wherein they congratulated him with the approval of his papers and application and that he was now allowed to take his final exam!
Yahoo!!

He'd been waiting for this approval for almost seven months,whereas the estimated waiting time normally is 4-6 weeks! Unbelievable!
All that time he was not licensed, not able to do any appraisals by himself and only earning about half of the salary that he could have had.
Any-who, he immediately called for an appointment and has it set for this coming Tuesday at 9.30. Cool! Now let's hope he passes the first time!

In the meantime we needed to putz around some with water, sewer and electric to get it all hooked up and working.
Connecting the electric was easy. Nothing that a long cord and excess to an outlet in the barn couldn't fix .

Finding the water line involved digging a few holes but James found it fairly fast, after which he proceeded to cut the pipe, move it over to the side of the barn with some pipes and fittings and install a valve to turn it on/off.

                     

               

From there we used a looooong pipe to get it connected to the RV and voila, we had water!

Next up: the sewer! Very important!
Nobody quite knew where the line or tank was, just somewhere in a general area, so a lot more digging (in the hard, rocky soil!) was done!
But we did find it in the end and James proceeded to do a similar job as with the water, this time with some larger black pipes and fittings.
Of course everything was already done and covered before I showed up to take a picture, but you get the idea!

 

    

Our connection to the RV is a thick, long hose, which is connected to a 'macerator' (basically a poop-shredder), which is connected to the 'black' tank.
(Yes, I know .. TMI .. Too Much Information) 😁

It took some more fine-tuning over the next couple of days and some more organizing of various items and areas but we're all set up and happy to be here!
Even a small, easy move like this has it's stressful moments ..

Here's a few pictures of some of the plants I managed to save and bring over. There's two large boxes of strawberries, two pots with herbs and a pot with some spinach, arugola and lettuce mix seedlings that by some miracle decided to all germinate!
And the clematis I bought last year, which didn't grow at all but somehow survived the winter, has put out this one single but very pretty flower!

 
 
Phew! Like I said, we're happy to be here in a beautiful new spot, ready to start a new adventure!
By the way, this is our new happy hour spot ... could be worse!

Life is good. Proost!

 

This gorgeous Wisteria is draped over a trellis in Doug's yard, right next to the blueberries.
Depending on the variety, Wisteria smell rather delicious (sort of a Freesia smell) or they downright stink, and some might flower a second time, sometimes even a third, further into the season.

Oregon is probably at it's greenest at the moment, all trees and shrubs have leafed out and due to ample rainfall earlier this month the whole state has turned into some sort of jungle!



Due to the wonderful sunny and dry weather we're able to work steadily towards our departure .. only a week from now!
Unfortunately my raised beds will not make the move, the wood of the pallets is just to old and will brake when lifted, so I dismantled them and they were tossed on the burn pile.
I did save the soil (into 23 sand bags) since it's only a year old and should be totally fine for another year or so after a little enrichment ..

The pallets that make up our porch (covered by the mat) are fine and will come with us though.
We revealed an intricate tunnel system underneath. I'm not sure if they're gopher- or chipmunk-made?

In between all that hard work we made sure to get in some R&R.
It's really hot during the day (85-90F) but when it's cooling down a little in the evening it's just perfect for a 9-hole round of golf!



It was my first time back on the course after 1.5 years, if you can believe it!
First I was down for almost a year with Plantair Fascitis in my right foot, when that healed I stubbed my foot and broke a toe in my left and at the moment, despite not having golfed for all that time, I'm actually suffering from a golfer's elbow!
Besides golf, the latter can be caused by any repetitive movement of your arm/elbow/wrist .. but for the life of me I wouldn't know what I did. Blogging?

It was a gorgeous evening and I was very happy to notice that everything went just fine.
My game was as lousy as ever (ha!), but my feet were OK and I was able to use my arm in such a way that I didn't feel my elbow .. go figure.
We did use a cart this time around but next time I'll try to walk, I think I will be just fine!

And that will be all for this week. Due to the heat and the upcoming move we're not that 'out and about' at the moment. At least next week the temps are coming down to more 'normal' for the season, around the mid 70's. I'm not complaining!

Here's a pic of one of last week's sunsets. Not that spectacular but pretty enough!

 

It has been a beautiful week with temperatures in the 70s, just like I like it.
I'm not looking forward to the coming week though for which they forecast temps in the high 80s and even a few low 90s! Yikes!

In our swampy 'back forty' the Trout lilies (aka adder's tongue, white dog's-tooth violet, serpent's tongue, trout lily, deer tongue, and yellow snowdrop) as well as the Trilliums (wakerobin, toadshade, tri flower, birthroot, birthwort, and sometimes "wood lily") have already done most of their flowering:

                                

                                

I had some 'new' visitors to the yard again, this time in the form of a small flock of Quail. (Which is actually called a Covey, whereas a large group, which they form in late summer (sometimes more than 50 birds), is called a Bevey ..)

They don't stand still for a moment so the pictures are a little blurry ..

This buck has been hanging around for a couple of days as well. If you look closely you can see his new antlers coming in ..

He's totally unimpressed with us and is munching his way through the new grass and the young leaves of the blackberries, which apparently are especially tasty?
After a while he will lay down for a couple of hours in the high grass of the orchard to chew his cud and take a little nap. Life is good!

Last Sunday we went to see another matinee show in our beloved little Gallery Theater in McMinnville.
This time for the 1980s musical 9 to 5:

“9 to 5” Of course was the theme song to the 1980 film Nine to Five, a story of gender inequality in the workplace in which three female secretaries decide to get revenge on their tyrannical, sexist boss by abducting him and running the business themselves.
Dolly Parton starred in this film along with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The theme song not only reached number one on the country charts, but also, in February 1981, reached number one on the pop and the adult-contemporary charts, giving her a triple-number-one hit.

              

The high-energy show was well done and we had a great time cheering on the girls and booing that bastard of a boss!
And although this is a lighthearted comedy we all felt some awkwardness at certain scenes when realizing it still captures what we hate about, and what is still wrong, in the workplace to this day ..

Talking about work, we still had a few things to do around the RV, like cleaning and re-waterproofing the awnings:

We do it every couple of years since the sun beating on the canvas slowly works away at it's protective coating.

James also checked the batteries which started to drain a little too fast over the last year and were probably on their last legs.
Sure enough, he couldn't get the truck started and when trying to re-charge them they wouldn't hold any charge.



So, 'out with the old and in with the new'! It turned out they were 10 years old! Not bad for usually only having a 4 to 5 year life-spam!

At the end of a busy day you can't beat the ease of throwing something on the BBQ.
Which we did.
Those are Teriyaki-marinated flank-steak strips (say that 3 times fast). Add some Sweet potato fries and a fresh salad and you're in business!

Yup! Life is good!