Winter has arrived (and Jim has come home)

While Jim was away I took the opportunity to clear out a couple of cupboards.

I started with the wardrobe in the third bedroom, which I use as a study. I completely emptied it, sorted through everything and got rid of a lot of stuff. Nice and mostly empty:

It does now have the summer clothes hanging in it, 
but they don't take up much room.

Then I turned my attention to the pantry. I wanted to swap the top shelf and the bottom shelf around. While I was about it, I  tidied up the other two shelves. I don't usually have tinned meat and tinned veg in the pantry. They are there in case we have to isolate for any length of time while the freezers are short of ingredients. The freezers, it must be said, are definitely not short of ingredients. They are, in fact, full to bursting. But the pantry looks good. For now!

Winter greeted the start of June with enthusiasm.

First frost of winter on the first day of winter

This was as hot as it got outside on Thursday

I have ordered more sawdust "briquettes" and 
am about to order a trailer load of wood

And here comes the rain

I have had the central heating fixed. You may remember that last winter the control panel on the wall stopped working, so we couldn't use the heating. We didn't miss the central heating, using the wood fire and the space heater through the winter. I decided this year that I was paying quite a lot for the privilege of using gas, when in fact we weren't using all that much. Just a bit for cooking and hot water. So I got someone in to see if it was worth fixing. Ten minutes and $250 later I had a new wall controller and a working central heating system.

I am reminded how much I don't like the central heating system! It is nice to have instant warmth, but I really do not like having hot air blowing from the ceiling at my face. And I really, really do not like the way it gets to temperature and then blows cold air at us until the temperature falls again to a level where it decided to blow hot air again. The bloke who came to fix it tells me that it is an old and outdated system (no s**t Sherlock - it was put in when the house was built 17 years or so ago and, I think, quite cheaply at that) and I might want to think about replacing it. He was aghast when I said that I would probably look to replacing it with an electric, or solar system. He informed me very solemnly that solar panels on the roof don't work when it is cloudy and that renewable energy is a disaster waiting to happen. You'd have thought that an electrician would be pleased by the thought of people using electricity, but there you go. In the meantime, I do like the warmth that the wood fire produces, even if it takes more effort.  The Pretty Kitty Kats like it too, although they have also discovered the pleasures of lying on the blanket on our bed under the central heating vent in our bedroom:

Jim has come home from his two week respite holiday and has thrown my routine completely out of whack. (Didn't take long for me to develop a "living alone" routine :-D ) He can have up to 9 weeks a (financial) year of government subsidised respite care and I am planning to use it, sending him in every few months so he gets used to it. It won't be all that many months before he will have to go in permanently if his dementia continues as it has been going over the last year. In the meantime, his next level of home care package has come into play. His new case manager is coming to see us tomorrow to sort out what he needs and how we can organise it