Friday Miscellany

It was cold this morning.  Real cold.

Of course, I knew it was going to be cold, because I'm my father's daughter.  My dad was the original weatherholic. 

It's been chilly all week, and with the recent rains, I've had a hard time finding enough dry wood to start a fire.  Tuesday, I worked up such a sweat trying to start a fire with damp wood that by the time I got said fire going, I didn't need it any more.  I decided then and there that I was going to move my wood pile, which is currently behind the fence

into the old chicken coops behind my shed.

That's pretty much what I've been doing after work this week.  I get home and move wood until dark  -- which comes mighty early this time of year -- then take a shower and go to bed.  Except Thursday.  Since I knew I wouldn't want to get out in the cold today, I went on to the store straight after work.  It took me forever to get out of there, because I kept running into people I knew and stopping to talk.  But I eventually did make it home, and was able to move a bit of wood up to the house before it got too dark. 

I also started cutting up and moving some of the green wood from the tree I just had cut down into one of the coops. 

I'm putting it into its own separate coop, because it needs to age a bit before I can burn it.  It'll be ready by next winter.  You know what?  Cutting, splitting, and stacking wood is hard work.  I can't imagine depending on that to be my only source of heat.  Our ancestors were definitely tougher than we are.

There is something I discovered moving wood all week, though.  I thought there were four coops back there, but in reality, there are five.  Not that that is important or anything.  I just thought I'd throw it out there.  I also discovered that the previous owner had not, in fact, cleaned out all the coops like I thought.  They'd cleaned out two, but the other three are pretty deep in chicken...um, fertilizer.  Yeah, let's call it that.  I'm going to scrape it all up and work it into my flower beds next spring.  They ought to like that. 

Speaking of flowers, I think the ground is soft enough to start moving my spider lily bulbs.  When this current cold spell passes, I'll do just that. 

I think I've done just about all the Christmas decorating I'm going to do this year.  I got a little stuck on this vase.  I usually put fake flowers -- poinsettias and holly-- in it, but I wanted to try something different.  I put a bit of garland in it, but I thought it was a bit too dark.

I thought it would look nice with some shiny glass balls in it, but they just didn't look right.  Maybe it's because of the vase's shape.  I ended up just sticking some gold garland in the vase

and put the balls into a bowl. 

By the way, that book is the same one my mother used to read to us when we were kids.  I mean, not the same book, but the same edition.  I found it online in a used book store. 

It was so nice to find a piece of my childhood.