Young hazelnut orchard a little down the road from us

We've had a rather quiet week, even the 4th (of July) didn't spark much activity over here.
Newberg doesn't have a parade and not even fireworks, they save all that for the 'Newberg Old Fashioned Festival' which takes place at the end of the month.
We could have gone to McMinnville or Sherwood for a parade and we thought for a fleeting moment to go to St Paul where the yearly rodeo sports both such events, but we weren't very motivated this year.
We are still working diligently in 'our' garden and are actually having a lot of fun doing so, so we decided to stay home, make some pie and throw something on the BBQ and call it good.

Which we did .. James made a grand slam and the weather was such that we could have it outside:

 


I baked a cherry pie from those cherries we picked last week ..

We did walk to the pioneer cemetery that day, which is just a couple of hundred yards down the road from us ..

It's a beautiful little cemetery with the old graves mixed among the new. The oldest are from the mid-1800s:

                                                       

The huge pine trees add  a wonderful element of shade and smell. It's nicely maintained with benches provided here and there to sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings ..

The trees are humongous!

Our road, as well as all other rural ones at the moment, is lined with an abundance of sweet-peas. They're considered an obnoxious weed but I love them ..

Of course I had to bring some home ...

Like I said, we're working hard on our new site ..

All this ivy, together with just as much blackberry, is coming from out an around the trees and off the fence.

James is cutting it loose while I rake it in piles, after which it gets thrown in the cart. A couple of times during filling it I climb in it and stamp it all down .. after which it is carted off to the burn-pile.
There's a burn-ban in place at the moment so I guess we'll have a huge bonfire in the fall!

The grass in front of us is not being watered and they let it go brown/dormant now the weather is getting hot, but dandelions are still coming up so I'm still mowing ..

This is a zero-turn mower which takes some getting used to, but I'm starting to do alright!

Look at me go .. like I know what I'm doing?

We do most of the work in the cool morning hours. In the afternoon I sit in the filtered shade of the maple trees in our yard.
Spinning, reading, just relaxing .. life is good!
                            

Ahhhhh ...  ♫ summertime, and the living is easy ♬

View from behind the RV towards the foot hills of the Chehelam Mountains

We've worked hard last week at clearing the back fence, at what is going to be our future site, off the jungle of blackberries and ivy that had overgrown it in the last 10 years or so.

In addition, James and Dan cut down 3 trees as well, which had died due to being strangled by Ivy .

They used Dan's little tractor to reach about halfway so James could cut most of the limbs off first, after which he proceeded to cut the trees in half before felling them completely ..

All went well and the trees fell exactly where they were supposed to .. always a little tricky to do but James did a great job!

We're still hacking away at the blackberries and ivy but we're slowly recovering the fence and are gaining a little more view of the hills behind it.

This picture shows the view a week ago :

Which as you can see was non-existent, and this next one shows it now:

We still need to clear more ivy from the top of the fence and we might even cut down the fence a little bit, or at least cut a few openings in it, so we have a view when we sit down on our future porch as well.
It's a slow process but we have time, and due to the extreme warm weather of the moment we're limiting ourselves to about 2 hours early in the morning when it's still cool.

I forgot to show a few other projects we did last week as well, like cutting the hedge:

And installing a new light outside the barn that hasn't worked in years and that had been on the 'honey-do' list for a while.
Dan is getting a little more apprehensive of working that high on a ladder so it was a project that they really appreciated to finally have done.

   

It comes on at dusk and turns of at dawn and besides making it easier to back the car in when it's dark, it hopefully also acts as a deterrent for anybody or any animals to creep around in the night ...

For something fun to do this week we accompanied Dan and Cindy to a cherry orchard they go to every year in Dundee, which is only about 15 minutes from here.
Miller Farm Cherries is a small, seasonal u-pick cherry orchard and cherries are only $1.50/pound.
You better get there right when the season opens because they go fast!

                       

   

We decide to go early and were the first ones there at 8.00 am on opening day! Look at these gorgeous dark-red cherries!

                                                     

And although there were some trees that were practically laden with fruit the he owner told us that they're having a very bad year, the reason being that there are no bees!
Some of these cherries are self-pollinating but most others need bees and they are in short numbers these days.
Human activities like large-scale changes in land use, industrialised agricultural practices, like monocultures, and the detrimental use of pesticides have all contributed to destroying their habitats and reducing their available food sources.
It's a big problem and quite worrisome for the future of many of our crops ..

Nevertheless, we managed to pick a lot, as in 14.5 pounds in only half an hour!
We'd set a limit before going out because I have only so much freezer space, but it was very easy picking and hard not to keep going seeing all this gorgeous fruit!
(Dan and Cindy picked a lot more, as in 61 pounds, but they have a dehydrator and dry most of it).

And than after bringing our loot home of course the real work started!
After washing them thoroughly we set up a 'pit-removal station' in our back yard, borrowed two simple but very effective pitter-tools from Dan and Cindy, donned some gloves and got to work:

It took us only an hour to get them all done! I separated them into 6 baggies with 4 cups each, and into the freezer they went!

I see a lot of cherry pie, cherry cobbler and crisp, cherry sauce and cherry preserves .. just to name a few .. in the future!

Talking about food .. the other day, after we measured some houses (we now go out as a team for appraisals, at least for the measuring part of it) we decided to drop in for lunch at Alf's in McMinnville.

This historic hamburger and ice cream shack straight out of the 1950's used to have a drive through but now only serves from the diner itself. 

Their hamburgers and ice-cream is home-made and their prices are reasonable.

                                                                                   

It's a little bit of tasty nostalgia with good food and a 50's atmosphere with 50s decor and 50s music!

                                     

There used to be a monkey in a cage but I guess he retired a couple of years ago.

His name was Elvis and the joint is kind of named after him .. Alf (Elv)'s(is) ..

The garden 20 years ago, when it still had a good view of the city!

Last Wednesday we decided to take a break from all the working and organizing and planning of lately and go for a little road-trip.
We'd talked about re-visiting Portland's rose-garden, where we'd last been about 20 years ago, and since it was a beautiful sunny day we went for it.
The International Rose Test Garden is a rose garden in Washington Park in Portland, Oregon, right next to the Japanese Garden and the Zoo.



There are over 10,000 rose bushes of approximately 650 varieties and they bloom from April through October with the peak in June, depending on the weather.

   

New rose cultivars are continually sent to the garden from many parts of the world and are evaluated on several characteristics, including disease resistance, bloom formation, color, and fragrance.



Portland's nickname is 'City of Roses’ and the garden is it's signature landmark.

It is the oldest continuously operating public rose test garden in the United States and draws an estimated 700,000 visitors annually.

The garden is situated on a hill above the city and parking close by can be an issue, since there are not that many spaces available. We planned to be there quite early, around 9.30, which was a good thing because we snatched up the very last one!

The entrance is free but you pay $2/2hrs to park, which is unheard of for Portland!

Well, we definitely managed to hit the garden at it's peak bloom! 

Pretty much all the roses were blooming which made for an absolutely stunning view down the hill and over all the flowerbeds that were just bursting with colors!

It took us about 2 hours to leisurely stroll the meandering paths, taking in all the sights and especially all the smells!

These last ones were some of my favorites, with their yellow buds that turned into orange/pink flowers!

We'd brought some coffee and cookies and found a sunny spot to sit down. The weather was beautiful, but this early in the morning it was still somewhat cool in the shade :

  

Closely watched by a whole bunch of, rather tame, ground-squirrels ... they were happily munching on some juicy new shoots but they were eyeing our cookies ...

                                                

We walked the steps down to the end of the garden and than back up again to the top from where you can overlook the whole garden and from where you used to have a view over the city (like the picture at the top of this post, which I stole from the web).
In the 20 years we hadn't been there the trees had definitely grown and nowadays you only have a few little peaks of the city in the far distance :

By than it had warmed up considerably, and we sat down again for a while for some more coffee on one of the benches where you can overlook the whole garden.

We watched quite a lot of groups of volunteers (mostly women) who were deadheading and pruning. I guess a garden like this can use some help in peak-season!

      

It's hard to stop making pictures when there's this much beauty around every corner!

                          

We debated going into Portland for some more sight-seeing and lunch but we'd had such a nice, peaceful and relaxed morning that we just didn't feel like having to deal with traffic or people or parking so we drove back towards Newberg and stopped for lunch at Sophia's Cafe in Sherwood instead.

This little Mediterranean restaurant, that offers Greek and Lebanese meals, had been on our radar for a while but we'd just never made it there ..yet.
We ordered a lamb gyro plate and fried vegetables with hummus and fries:

It was delicious! We'll be back!

And that's all she wrote for this week I'm afraid, not much else going on ..
We're still waiting on the permit from the county to come through, so we can move to our permanent spot, and are doing some daily weeding, mowing and pruning of the site.
I can't wait to settle in properly with everything hooked up and in it's permanent place. For now it feels like we're still sort of camping and might (have to) move any day.

We're keeping our fingers crossed. Hopefully we hear something soon!