Svetlana the wood-fired stove, and changeable Scottish weather

Today has been a mostly-sitting-at-the-computer day and a bit on the chilly side, so I made up an afternoon fire in the summer grate in our lovely Bulgarian stove (I have given the stove the name Sventlana).

 The side-benefit of this early fire is having a hot stove on which to make veggie soup and keep a kettle warm for continuous hot drinks. (We have a gas hob too, but there's something lovely about having a continually hot surface to stick things on to heat.)

Helpfully, but less excitingly, I'll now also have hot water to wash up with.  I'll probably lay another fire tonight and get a bonus bathful of very hot water and heated towel-rail from it.

But for now, I guess I should gently evict this cat from my lap to go and split some more firewood and plant the rhubarb, both of which latter activities will be warming exercise of their own.  Can't believe only three days ago I was having to water the veg patch due to the hot day and tonight I'll be insulating it with hay instead. Brr!

Update: Not the biggest woodpile, but I'm definitely getting better at splitting wood.

Sunshine and livestock

It is sunny, I got to bottle-feed two two-day old lambs, got lovely post from lovely friend, now sitting in the garden on a deckchair with ceiling cat perched on my shoulder. I approve of this.

Also, I got to milk a cow for the first time, albeit not as efficiently as her normal milker. Good day today. :-)

Exciting times!

So, we planted beans, courgettes, squash, chives, and purple basil in seed trays in the Glasgow flat.  They're coming on really well:

I wonder if I'll be brave enough to plant them outside next week...

Home

I love living here.  That's all really. Thrilling post, eh? But true.

Not smallholding, but: Look! New Glasses!

Chopping wood

Photos courtesy of Simon Brooke

There's something on my back...

So, I leant down to do up my boots.  Suddenly I felt a weight land on my back. I asked Simon to look at me.  He looked me in the face (he was sitting in an easy chair putting on his boots) and didn't appear to see anything out of the ordinary. "No, look at my back!" I said.  He laughed, then instead of helping me he picked up his camera. Hm.