1.12.2023 Not losing it.

 ~o~

Friday 1st December. 24F/-4C. Heavy overcast. Scattered snow showers promised. Up at 6.15 after two visits to the fire bucket. Nothing to drink with early dinner. Salad is mostly water.

 Wide angle view of the [wild] western boundary.

 7.30 61F/16C in the room. 32F/0C in the greenhouse. 36F/2C in the balcony room. 61F/16C in the bedroom. I had better light the stove. I need more logs from the greenhouse. The kitchen and bathroom are hovering just above 55F/13C. Which feels quite comfortable for the limited amount of time I spend out there. In the past there were no electrical sockets nor fuse capacity for these small radiators. So the kitchen and bathroom were unheated. Except for a fan heater when I showered. My wife always refused to use the fan heater because of the noise.

 It is fortunate that there is a small entrance hall and another to the greenhouse door. These halls act as useful air locks. To avoid massive heat loss when outside doors are opened. I fitted recycled, fully glazed doors to both halls. Then replaced the solid greenhouse door with a pair of recycled, double glazed, double doors. Only after my wife's curtains had been removed from all of the glazed doors. Could available light be shared throughout. 

 When we bought the hovel 27-odd years ago every door was solid. Which meant there was no light in either hall. Now I can move freely round the place without struggling to find a [once] non-existent light switch. I would still like a glazed entrance door. To bring more light into the hall. Particularly when the solid bathroom door is closed in winter. Which it must be to retain the small radiator's heat. It couldn't cope with the draughty entrance door and increased volume of the hall.

 I have arranged furniture to provide safe surfaces. Where things can be safely put down. When moving between the kitchen and living room. Or when bringing logs in from the greenhouse. This is hugely beneficial in further reducing the time the doors must be left open. So that there is a minimum of heat loss. Having to go outside to bring in logs would lose more heat than the wood provided. 

 The flooded area beside the earthworks under snow. I find the trees, curves and levels very satisfying visually. It could easily have become an ugly desert. Instead of which they produced a curved drive. Which saved some of the existing trees of an abandoned piece of land. There was a sunken, roadside hovel above steeply sloping ground. The building was demolished. Leaving a wilderness of Japanese Knotweed from imported soil.   

 The greenhouse also acts as a useful air lock. As well as protecting most of the southern facade from the wind and weather.  Not to mention a log storage/drying area and a well lit, sheltered workshop. Whether to clear the roof is an ongoing decision. Best to leave the snow in place if there is no sunshine? Clear it if there is a hope of added warmth?

 8.00 I have brought three baskets of logs in from the greenhouse. It takes five baskets to completely fill the ring rack.

 8.15  65F/18C in the room. I don't think it is going to get any lighter for a while. I can see the garden trees flapping in the wind. So it will feel much colder on my walk. Everything looks very white out there. The sticky snow has adhered to most surfaces. 

 9.00 Morning coffee. It wasn't really cold on my walk. I wore the Gore-Tex jacket over the down sweater and was too warm. Or too sweaty? On average there is less than 2" [50mm] of snow. Avoiding the roads was even more sensible this morning. A salting lorry passed but the road was still dark tracks between ridges of slush and snow. Lots of articulated lorries passed this morning. There was a brief clearing in patches of lower cloud s I headed for home. Leaving glimpses of much higher, speckled golden clouds. This didn't last before the overcast returned to close the lid.

 9.45 It has started snowing lightly again. Despite the overcast, the house is full of light. All thanks to the reflective snow to the north. Meanwhile the greenhouse is hardly letting any light in at all. 

 Whoops! The laundry basket has got away from me again. Intensive application required. The washing is easy. Getting it dry is the problem. A little and often would be the way to go. If I had any common sense at all.

 I had to do three days of washing up or starve.

 19.00 30F/-1C. Dinner was sausages, badly fried egg, peas and chips.

~o~