Miscellaneous: Home-baked sourdough bread

When I was in high school, oh so long ago now, I used to bake bread quite often. Loved doing it. Had a great recipe for a Swedish limpa bread (light rye) that was sometimes our daily bread and another for a delicious oatmeal bread. But I haven't baked bread in years. During the pandemic, we've been trading garden-grown greens with a friend for sourdough loaves. After months of doing this, I asked for some starter and yesterday tried baking a loaf--my first attempt at sourdough, never having done sourdough back in high school. Even though I mixed up the order of doing things to some extent, it worked. Behold! My first loaf.

I used this recipe, which is quite easy to follow, but you have to first make starter or get someone to give you some. 

Rain: First real rain of the season (November 2020)

Last Thursday, November 12 we had a little rain--about 0.4 inches--but yesterday (November 17) and today we've had a decent downpour. It finally feels like fire danger is over for the year after an evacuation in August (much earlier than usual--because of fires started by lightning in many parts of the state in the absence of rain) and then fire scares again in October. 

The last rain we had was on May 13, in the 2019-2020 rain year. This new rain is the first of the 2020-2021 rain year, which goes from October 1, 2020 to September 30 2021. So far there is 1.20 inches of new rain in the rain gauge, bringing our total to 1.60 inches (way below normal for this point in the year), but it looks like there will be at least a little more rain today.

Birds I'm Watching: Bald Eagle at Howarth Park, Santa Rosa

Out for a walk this morning looking for birds. Not enough birds and far too many people walking, running, and biking without masks. Along the trail several people volunteered that they had seen a Bald Eagle earlier in the day near the lake by the parking lot I had parked in. As I rounded a corner near the spot he was supposed have been, there was no bird. Then someone said he'd flown away down the edge of the lake not long before, where I spotted him in the distance. Shortly afterward, he flew in much closer. I spent about 45 minutes getting some decent photos. First time seeing a Bald Eagle in Sonoma County, CA, which is about the southern edge of the Bald Eagle's historical range.