Winter has finally arrived

There was no snow when I woke up this morning, but it wasn't half flaming cold. So after breakfast I piddled off outside and dug up all my onions. There's maybe about 50 of them and that's not really enough for a year's worth of cooking. I should have planted many more than that.

But with the temperature continuing to drop and with the heavy torrential rain that started to fall I called it a day in the garden and started to unpack the supplies that had come from the States and the supplies that Terry and Liz had bought me from the UK.

And while I was doing that, the heavy rain turned to heavy snow and that was that. It snowed and snowed and snowed and now we have had quite a pasting. It's sub-zero outside and this snow is going to stick.

I went round to Rob and Nicolette's too to thank them for keeping an eye on the premises. Nicolette said that she had had some of my beans and courgettes - one of which weighed 4.5 kilos! Courgettes grow well round here. She had made a huge courgette and bean soup and had frozen some of it for my return which I thought was really nice of her. And in exchange I gave them a little something that I had bought in Canada and which was in the box of goodies. Funnily enough, I went there at 18:00 for a quick chat and it was 20:45 when I left yet it only seemed like 5 minutes that I was there.

And now I'm holed up here in my room with a raging blaze from the little fire. The temperature was 7.4 degrees when I came up here but a good blaze for an hour or so brought the temperature up to 18 degrees, which is much more like it. And I have no intention whatever of moving from here.