According to the forecast the next sighting of the sun has been pushed back to Tuesday, which is not good news. Ian’s batteries are suffering and I’ve turned off his pressure pump and refrigerator. There’s something wrong there, probably in the settings: It’s not charging the batteries right, even though it did for quite a while. Pity: I could use a shower.
Yesterday it started raining hard around 2:30 and didn’t stop all the rest of the day. According to the rain gauge, which I don’t trust, we got a hair less than an inch of rain which is a lot for one day here. All the snow is gone and the mud is deep.
This morning’s walkie greeted me with this…
Fog. Yuck. No wonder my stump and joints hurt.
On the way home I could smell woodsmoke coming from the cabin, still way out of sight. That’s rare but I’ve been burning a lot of juniper lately to take the load off my supply of pallet- and lumber-based firewood. I put up a lot of juniper last autumn. Got home, stirred up the coals and threw a couple of 2X4 chunks on the stove…
Even the pine ones burn hotter – and a lot cleaner – than juniper. Days like this are kind of a pain, now that the bedroom heater isn’t working. On a normal winter day I burn the woodstove to take the chill off, then let the sun coming through the big south window do the rest. Shirtsleeve temperatures by noon, with a nice bonus that the bedroom reading chair…
…is always in a nice comfy zone. But depending on the woodstove alone, during an overcast spell, is feast or famine. The cabin is too small to need a constant fire and anyway the stove is too small to sustain one without tending it every 20 minutes or so. So it’s build a fire, let it heat up the cabin and then go out, wait for it to get cold again, then build another fire. Or, once you’re sick of doing that, just put on your coat. It’s not like it’s really all that cold right now. 15 years ago I wouldn’t have considered wasting fuel on weather that won’t even freeze water but these bones are getting old. I turn 70 next month and anyway it ain’t the years, it’s the mileage and the collision damage.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my book.