Well, I didn't quite have my early night ...

... as I started talking to someone on the internet and it was 02:00 when I finally went to bed, but here's something that doesn't happen every day - not only was I awake when the alarm went off, and not only was I breakfasting, but I was actually outside weeding the garden when the alarm clock went off this morning. Wide awake at 07:30, I was, and I've no idea why. I must have wet the bed or something.

But it was a good day to be wide awake so early. By the time that I came in for a coffee - at about 11:50 - it was 24.6°C outside with gorgeous blue skies and everything. It really was marvellous.

Terry came round a little later. He had a job of work to do in the vicinity and so he popped by to sey hello. And I swapped a few 4mm bolts for a few sacks of sawdust - the composting toilet depends on sawdust, and plenty of it, and I was starting to run low.

With it being so nice, I quickly coupled up the solar water heater -cum - shower unit. I was not really wanting to do that as there are a few improvements that I want to do, but it was a shame to miss out on the solar heat and the possibility of a shower some time in the near future. I could certainly do with a shower anyway, and I'll be heading to the swimming baths at Neris if it stays nice tomorrow.

  With so much solar energy (we had 243 amp-hours today - that's about 3KwH) the water in the dump load reached 48°C. That was the cue for the first load of washing for the year. And there was plenty of that to do as well. And it was nice to sit outside this afternoon with a butty or two, a coffee from the electric coffee machine, and watch the washing machine do the business using water heated by the surplus energy off my system. It really is a sense of acccomplishment for all of this to happen. But as for the washing itself, most of it is going to have to be done again. I tried to do it using these washing nut things but they turned out to be a dismal failure and haven't made mush impression at all on the dirty stuff. I'll have to buy some "proper" washing powder stuff and do it again.

After all of that, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden again. I didn't have the fire going because I had the washing hanging out, but there's now a huge mountain of weeds and so on ready to be burnt and I might do that tomorrow morning. The area to where I'm going to move one of the compost bins is now clear. All I need to do is to dig up a few small tree stumps there, and compact some hardcore down to stop the weeds from penetrating from underneath, and then I can put the first of the bins there. And when the pile of weeds has been burnt, I can start to put the greenhouse there where it ought to be.

It seems to me that everyone is starting to come out of hibernation now.