Hot Pink!

I thought I would give a little spark to the cold, cold weather that most of us are experiencing. This is blooming in my laundry room under the lights. It keeps company with a jalapeno, 4 tomatoes and a pepper or two. Isn't it just too pretty in the middle of January? I look at it quite often.

It is colder than a well digger's tail out there, but not too bad inside..finally! Sweet Husband went on a winterizing spree yesterday and put up plastic on the worst of the old, rattle-y windows. It is like having a new house!!! The wind no longer whistles and howls through the house.. well, not as badly.

And I put up a window quilt over the double window in the living room. It works great! This morning and until around 10:00 or so there was ice on the INSIDE of that window. I could see it from the front porch, but no cold air could be felt when I slid my hand under the curtain. Can you imagine the amount of cold that would have been pouring through without the quilt?! As a result of the efforts, the house is not too bad, as long as we keep the woodstove fed.

And I have been working on the external winterization for the past few days. It was a frenzy to get everything set before the cold got here. I finished putting up plastic on the south side of the barn and did some more cloth on the north side. Sweet Husband came through yesterday and finished up the parts I couldn't reach. He built a 'house' for DaintyPig and I covered that as well, burying the ends of the plastic under a good layer of soil. I also laid in a good amount of hay. I put plastic up on the windows of the bunny room too. A deep layer of old hay and straw went down over the garden.. the strawberries, onions, cabbages and herbs. I hope it all makes it through.

And that brings us up to today. Not much shaking. Except that the bottom heating element in my stove blew out. We are searching around for a replacement part. It is an ancient behemoth of a stove, but I have gotten spoiled with all of the space it affords. I can place a full cutting board on the top between the eyes and it has a ton of storage. A two shelved 'warming' drawer that houses my smaller baking goods and a huge drawer underneath too. Plus, it is cheaper to replace the part than to buy a new stove, you know? Eventually it will get replaced and will spend the last years of it's life out in the summer kitchen (it is NOT a garage.. it IS a summer kitchen) so I can do my baking and canning without heating up the house. Oh, and because the stove was taken apart, I had a big bowl of black bean chile for breakfast. It was so good and filling.. heavy on the red peppers too.

I hope that each of you is as warm as you can be and I will not complain about the cold for I know that many of you live where this the norm. Though, for the life of me, I do not know why.