We had visitors last week, this large group of Elk showed up in the late afternoon!
How cool is that?
This hillside is just visible from 'our' property, if we walk up the little hill to the house, although the zoom of the camera and a pair of binoculars helped a lot of course ..

                                   

                                             

The pictures got a little blurry when I enlarged them ..

No obvious bulls in sight but that's most likely due to the fact that the NW Elk shed their antlers around the middle/end of March, so they're probably all off by now.
They were all gone the next morning .. off to greener pastures!

Easter has already come and gone again. That's the disadvantage of blogging only once a week, I often am a little behind times ..
As usual I decorated some:

Other than that we just relaxed, which means James golfed and I read.
We had a nice piece of Key Lime pie for coffee and I prepared a Lamb-roast in the Instant pot.
I forgot to take pictures .. sigh .. except for this one of the dessert.
Banana cream mousse with 'Peeps':

The weather has been quite good this week and I went for a little walk to the river which is at the bottom/start of the road we're on:

 

It's just a short walk down and I have to cross the main road, but I can actually walk along the water's edge for a little.
It's a nice change of scenery from my usual meadow-views.

                                                  

Lots of horsetails are coming up along the soggy shore and the willows looked especially bright here against the deep blue sky:

No lambs or Easter bunnies around here but I see more and more calves in our neighbor's meadow:

         

I love that these beef-calves can stay with their mothers for quite a long time (6-8 months) whereas milk-cows are separated almost immediately from their mamas.

As I mentioned, so far these first couple of days in April have been fairly nice.
Long stretches of sunshine, although rather on the cool site still, and quite windy in the afternoon.
In the sun and out of the wind, on the lee-side of the RV, we managed to sneak in a few outdoor happy-hours and even a (first of the year) dinner 'al-fresco'!

Soon, we will need an umbrella to sit there or maybe we'll move the table to the other side for the summer.
It was an easy one-bowl affair (left-over lamb with couscous) but dinner is dinner and it was very good!

                                        

This week I made short work of the two smallest puzzles from the box I borrowed from our landlord.
They went fast since they're only 300 pieces each, although the circle-shape involved some weird shaped pieces which made it a little more challenging ..

And that's all for this week. It's April, my birthday-month, and it looks like the weather is slowly getting 'better' as they say.
For me 'better' is actually just like it is right now, maybe just a tad warmer, but not by much! I really hope this coming summer will not be such a hot one, but with global warming becoming more and more apparent I'm afraid there's not much hope for that ..

 
It's been a cloudy and at times rainy week again, but not as bad as they predicted.
I guess you have to see a silver lining in the fact that it rains just a little ..
I've heard this is the first spring in two or three years that we're not starting the season with a water shortage. I can't say I'm surprised!

It was actually dry on some of my morning walks. I've been exploring an area a little further up (or actually down) the road:

                       

                       

At the bottom of this hill the road splits into different paths that look like they all dead-end into driveways, so I'm a little reluctant to push too far and end up on somebody's property.
Big, scary watch dogs are my biggest concern, but there's always the chance of a crazy gun-slinging recluse as well ..

I came across some deer prints:

                                                                           

They're around, although I haven't seen one yet, and lately people are seeing cougars on a regular base quite close to here.
The deer, elk and cows are calving and the 'cats' are on the hunt!

The Oregon Grape is starting to flower:

                

And there are still a lot of these double, ruffled Daffodils growing in the berms of our road. No clue how they've gotten there since it's a rural road and I don't think anybody planted them there?
They don't do very well inside but I can't resist bringing some new ones in once they're fading.

                                           

Business is picking up considerably at the moment, we went from a handful in January and February to 24 appraisals in March! Now we're talking!

'The office' is not done yet so James is still working from the RV. This is how he's set up in the corner of the RV ... he'll be so happy when he finally will get more room!

Since he's using the dining room table to spread everything out I'm using that folding-table to puzzle.
I finished another 500 piece one. Much smaller than what I'm used to (1000 pieces) but not much easier!

               

Daylight saving time has started and of course it's now a lot longer light.
We even managed to have happy hour outside one evening. Still sweater weather but very comfortable!
We're sitting on the pond-side here, facing the south-west:



                                              

The weather has improved a lot over the last 2 days and they're forecasting a beautiful, sunny Easter.
We haven't planned anything, other than playing some golf and I bought a lamb roast, so it hopefully will be a quiet, peaceful weekend.

We'll keep our fingers crossed!

It's Spring again! Joining the early cherry trees that are now flowering everywhere, this little pear in our landlord's yard is blossoming as well.

Little spring flowers in the meadows are a sure sign of the weather warming up, like these Western Buttercups:

                                              

Due to the mild weather there's a lot of Purple Dead-nettle already:

Maybe this is the year I'll collect a bunch and make  salve, it's supposed to be anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal and antibacterial and can be used on cuts and wounds to help stop the bleeding. Historically, it was even used to alleviate joint pain.

           

The Weeping (white) Willows I photographed a couple of weeks ago are showing their yellow catkins, which by the way appear on separate male and female trees.

 

Male catkins are 2” long and somewhat showy, having tiny flowers with yellowish anthers and two stamens. Female catkins are smaller and non-showy, with greenish flowers.
I suppose these are both male trees?

                                                                      

The first purple flowers of Vinca (Periwinkle) are popping up as well near the spring in the bottom field. They love wet feet ..

I finally got a shot of one of the local squirrels. I'd seen them 'squirreling' around out of the corner of my eye once or twice but didn't really cross their paths until now.



It's an Eastern Fox Squirrel, intentionally introduced to urban areas in the early 1920s as pets and watchable wildlife, but rapidly becoming the most common backyard squirrel in the Portland area and believed to have contributed to the decline of native squirrel species.

So .. an imposter! But such a cute one!

                                                

Being notorious for willy-nilly burying their winter-stash of acorns and than forget about them I was happy to see that this one DID remember!
For some reason they still haven't found the peanuts I set out for them?
                                          
                        

James, with a little help from me, myself and I, has been 'making hay while the sun shines' and first put a primer on the shed/office:

Followed by the first of two finish-coats of 'Hunter' green:

                                                                 

Just in time for the rain to arrive on Thursday!

Or actually, just in time for his medical appointment on Thursday, I should say!
Turning 65 and all signed up for Medicare, he is having a whole bunch of preventive stuff done now it's covered by his insurance.
He already had a physical (all good) and routine blood-work (slightly higher cholesterol but most likely improvable by watching what he eats a little better), PSA (prostate-cancer test) was totally fine as well, a coronary calcium scan of his heart (no deposits at all), an eye exam (only slightly worse) and new glasses, and last Wednesday it was time for a Colonoscopy!

        

Not the nicest of all exams but a lot less 'intense' than it used to be. The 2 days of prepping are the worst, but he thought it wasn't bad at all and according to him the actual procedure was a breeze.
The fact that nowadays they put you under for about 15 minutes is probably a game-changer!

Nothing untoward was found and he doesn't have to worry about having another one done for 10 years which apparently not too many people are advised to do, especially in his age-group.
I guess, he now can brag like 'Maxine':

There's one more appointment left on the books, this time for the dermatologist.
He has a few moles and spots he wants to have checked out. Skin cancer is a bitch, better safe than sorry!

We're at the beginning of what is predicted to be a full week of sunshine and blue skies with temperatures in the high 60s, low 70s!
I'll have to see it to believe it but so far so good, it's been absolutely gorgeous for the last two days.

    Signs of Spring are everywhere!      

              

                                         

Those are maple buds and 'flowers', they're early this year and hopefully there won't be another frost soon because they will freeze and not produce their fruits/seeds.

Daffodils are flowering in full, and due to the two sunny days we had I spotted the first Dandelions!

    

And in our neighbor's meadow the Black Angus herd is welcoming the first calves!

               

(I think these are actually already a couple of weeks old but I hadn't seen them out yet)

Our landlords took advantage of the weather and started to plant the first of 8000(!) pine trees they are going to plant all over the property:



A lot of it is done by a machine but there is some 'hands-on' involved as well:

    


It's their plan to retire from their roofing business in the coming couple of years and grow christmas-trees instead.
They're getting older and roofing is quite hard on the body whereas these trees, once established, are very low maintenance.

James has picked up where he left with working on the office before the rain started last week, and is progressing nicely.
The doors are in (one for the storage-side and one for the office side):

And the siding is on!
He also installed a small AC-unit, the sun will be baking on this south-west side!

And since we let no celebrations go by without joining in, especially when there's food involved, I made corned beef with 'all the trimmings' for St. Patrick's Day:

           
I baked an Irish soda bread as well.
It rose a little too well (I might have added a tablespoon of baking-soda instead of a teaspoon?) and than deflated so there was a crack all along the side, but it tastes just fine!

                                                         

St Patrick, who actually wasn't even Irish, is known for bringing Christianity to Ireland but one of the most popular myths about the Irish saint is that he rid the country of snakes, however modern science has since ruined that belief for everyone.
As Ireland has always been an incredibly cold country, scientists have said that it's highly unlikely that there were any snakes to begin with and there are no fossils to disprove the theory.

It makes for funny cartoons though:

                                                   

And that's it for the week.
Hopefully another 5 more days to go before the rain will be back.
We'll see, we're going to try to get the office watertight and painted before that, so .. back to work!