As I said in one of my previous posts, April is my Birthday month, and yesterday was 'my' day!
Since it was my birthday I decided to buy a (three layer lemon-) cake, instead of baking one, to which I added some raspberry-sauce and a few fresh berries.

We actually got into a whole brain-crushing conversation during coffee about if this really was my birthday here, since I was born 9 hours earlier that day (the 26th) in Holland when it was still the 25th here in America ..
We came to the conclusion that everybody probably can celebrate their day on 3 different days, adding a day before and a day after the 'actual' date, depending on where in the world you were during your birth?
Works for me! Three days of cake!

                                                

My mom send me a 'real' card, and my sister and nieces were all over Whatsapp to congratulate me.
I also got a super-cool present (according to me and my nieces):

A Bat-box! So cool! I know, most women go for flowers or jewelry or perfume but I am tickled pink with getting a bat-box.
Not only do I think they're very interesting but since we're parked next to a large pond I hope they'll keep the mosquito population down this summer.
Also, bat-guano is very good fertilizer!

And look what arrived in the mail later that day! My sister and her daughter Lotte send me a box of scented candles (soy wax and essential oils) and a box of pretzel chocolates (sprinkled).

 

Sooooo sweet, thanks again girls!

The weather usually is quite nice on my birthday but this time it rained on and off and was mostly cloudy all day.
Oh well, we hadn't planned anything special other than going out for dinner, so I spend most of the day inside, relaxing and reading, which for me counts pretty much as a perfect day!

       

      

Wildflowers are happy with the rain and the (marginally) higher temperatures.
I have not figured out what that pink one is, it rather looks like a pink delphinium, but the one on the right is a Camas Lily which are showing up in abundance right now:

Earlier this week I spotted this unusually light colored raptor flying low over the meadow:

 

It took me a little to find out what it was but it turns out to be a Northern Harrier. The males are a pearly grey all over, hence their nickname 'ghost-birds'.
Their faces are odly flat, a little like an owl's.

That same morning this Osprey showed up. I was surprised to see him here since they mainly eat fish but than I realized that the river is only a stone's throw away and our property has 3 fairly good seized ponds.

     

It looked like he caught something .. or it's just nesting material?

 

And look who are back as well? The Goldfinches!

        

I wasn't sure if they'd show up here, but sure enough, there's a whole flock of them!
(Actually it's a 'charm' of Goldfinches, not a flock)

At ground-level the Ground Squirrels are happy to snatch up the fallen seeds ..

 

I finally managed to bake an almost perfect sourdough 'Boule' (an artisan free-form loaf):

              

The only thing I forgot was to 'score' it before baking, which gives it a nicer 'break' in the crust but other than that it was a beauty!

After I'd painted the inside of the new office with a primer, James got to do his favorite thing .. caulking!

   

Soon we will paint the walls again (green!) and there will even be wallpaper on the top sections!
Seems like overkill to me but James thought it would be fun .. I've been teasing him that he's building a Taj Mahal but that was actually build for an emperor's wife and this is going to be his office so that won't fly .. oh well, as long as he's happy with it!

                                        

Here's a few pics of my Birthday dinner yesterday. We went to Coyote Joe's in Willemina, just down the street from us.
It's a typical old-fashioned Ma-and-Pa diner with an outdated interior but good food and a favorite of the locals here.
On Friday nights they have Prime-Rib, something I never make for just the two of us, which we split of course. Those slabs of meat are huge:

And of course we (he) couldn't resist dessert, Peanut-butter chocolate cream pie, which we had to split as well. I couldn't possibly eat the whole thing by myself after the meal we just had. Probably never ..

It was delicious!

All in all a damn good Birthday! Let's do it again next year!

 

We're 3/4 into April and it looks like the 'snow-birds' are back in town!
I spotted the first Goldfinch at the feeders yesterday and a couple of days ago I came across this Orange-crowned Warbler down Houser Rd!

Although not quite rare, it's rather rare to see one since they're really tiny and usually spend their time out of sight in the dense undergrowth of the forest.
Despite the color orange being in their name, you won’t likely see much of it, they only show off their orange crown when they get excited because the head feathers raise.

                             

This one actually did show some color. He was singing very loudly and most likely defending his territory against intruders .. me?
(Fun fact; a group of warblers is called a wrench, fall, 'confusion' (ha!), or 'bouquet' (cute!).

A group of Blue Jays, like this jaunty fella, is called a 'band' or a 'party'.
This one was by himself though, but he (band-leader?) got away with a peanut .. for the party?

 

 

I've been working on setting up a few 'raised beds'. I decided to try my luck with a few large plastic totes this time.
They're cheap, lightweight, pretty much indestructible and easy to take with us if (when) we ever move again.
 

I put some holes in the bottom and filled the lower 1/4 with old, dead branches (they'll break down/compost eventually) to save a little bit on soil :

                                   

Yesterday James had to go to town with the truck and took the opportunity on the way home to fill the back with a 5-ingredient bulk soil that he got at Wilco.
For $60 he got a cubic yard, which is a lot cheaper than buying the brand-named soil in bags!

 

I filled all three totes (all kinds of veggies), 2 smaller self-watering ones (rhubarb and zucchini), 4 black 5-gallon plastic plant pots (blue- and rasp-berries), and 2 smaller ones for tomatoes.
I still have a few large (sand) bags left over for future patio-pots and hanging baskets.

I'm dying to plant something but my seedlings in the greenhouse are still tiny and the weather unpredictable. Better to be patient until mid- May or so!

Hard to see but they are there .. that's how small they are, I guess. What hasn't helped is the fact that the whole greenhouse fell over during a huge wind-gust this week.
I saved what I could but lost quite a few and besides that I don't have a clue what some of them are anymore since they all fell in a heap and lost their tags ..

This is the office, looking through the shed-part to the outside ..

             

James continues to work hard on the office in his spare time. We don't have too many appraisals going on at the moment (it's a feast or famine-thing), so there's quite a lot of that .. spare time I mean.

He put the insulation in ..

                           

                            This is the shed-part, looking in to the office part behind that ..

Followed by the inside wall-panels:

                        

The shed also got some shelves, for tools and pantry-stuff:                             

           

He also finally got the BBQ up and running. The bloody thing kept leaking gas but he finally figured out what caused it and fixed it, so all is good.
Let the summer grilling begin!

We christened the season with a nice fat steak .. which we (as usual) split:

A nice sweat potato with all the fixings (butter/sour cream) and a 'fiesta' veggie-medley of corn, peas and spicy fire-roasted tomatoes. Yumm!
Unfortunately we had to sit inside since the weather took somewhat of a turn towards dinner-time with plummeting temps and a cold wind ..

And since we ran unexpectedly out of bread, and I had to make something fairly fast for lunch, I tried my hand at baking Hamburger buns.
They were surprisingly easy to make and came out absolutely perfect. 'Winner, winner chicken dinner'!

OK. Another week done and over with. It's going to be my birthday next week! Time rushes forward at the moment .. probably because we are so busy .

(Singing) Spotted Towhee

Spring really is in full swing right now! More and more fruit trees are flowering, I see lots of birds flying around with nesting materials and they're singing all day long!

                                                             

I found this little blue egg, I suspect it's a Red Robin's:



It either fell out of the nest or one of the many Blue Jays that are around got a tasty little snack ...

It's definitely not this Chikadee's, theirs are much smaller!

            

The blue one on the left is the Robin egg, the tiny creamy white with little brown dots on the right is the Chickadee's.

I'd been on the lookout for Trout Lilies and as usually they snuck(sneaked?) up on me, despite me looking!
Our landlords have a whole bunch of them growing under the oaks (they like shade) next to their house.

That's the lilies on the left of course and the small blue Iris on the right is called Northern Blue Flag, a native of Oregon.

James has worked on installing his office's electric. For such a small building it sure takes a lot of wire!
I guess an office with it's computers, printers, shredder, battery back-ups, lights etc. etc needs a lot of outlets ..

I helped putting the second (and last) layer of paint on the outside. I did the 'cutting' and James did the rest with a big roller.

         

 
I was eager to get the thing painted because I wanted to hang my recently acquired 'Bee-hotel' on its south-east wall!
Although I played around for a while with the idea of getting honey-bees I've decided against them after all. It's quite a complicated endeavor and a lot of work, so I've opted for Mason and Leaf Cutter bees (aka orchard bees) instead.
They won't give you any honey but besides masters of pollinating, they're not aggressive at all and they don't need/use a hive!

Instead they use naturally occurring gaps such as between cracks in stones or other small dark cavities to build their nests or you can provide them with little nesting boxes or things like bamboo tubes/tunnels.

       

I choose this ingenious little 'house' made by Rivajam, that has pre-drilled nesting tunnels covered with a plexy glass viewing panel, so you can safely watch the bee's life cycle.
One side is sized for the common Mason Bee, and the other side is most suitable for smaller native bees like the Leaf Cutter Bee.

How fun is that?

Female bees will lay eggs in the tunnels which they separate from each other with mud, hence the name mason-bee.
Here's a little more about their life-cycle etc. : https://crownbees.com/pages/mason-bee-life-cycle
I was contemplating buying some cocoons to get a head start, but after placing the house on the grill outside, while getting the tools and a few screws to hang it, there was already a bee crawling in one of the openings when I came back! So cool!

While I was working on all that I suddenly noticed a strange little 'bulb' hanging from the underside of our awning:

                                                    
        

                                                                          

I'm afraid this is the start of a Bald-faced Hornet nest and they are not the friendliest of wasps around. They are aggressive and have very painful stingers, so I'm going to remove it before it'll get much bigger. Sorry guys ..

Other than that I've been on a bread-baking spree lately. Having read about the health benefits of sourdough bread (although it has comparable nutrients, the lower Phytate levels mean it is more digestible and nutritious. The pre-biotics also help to keep your gut bacteria happy, and it may be less likely to spike blood sugar levels) I'm baking more and more things 'sourdough' instead of 'normal' wheat breads.
This week I made a sourdough sandwich bread which came out pretty good:

And since we were out of English Muffins, which we eat on a regular base, I made the sourdough version of those as well.
This one was my first try-out, and since all went well I continued to make 10 of them:

                                                          

Not bad, if I say so myself .. a good 'crumb' and a nice 'tang' to them !

OK, that's all she wrote. It's 7.30 pm and it's still light ouside.

What a difference a few weeks make!