It dipped down to about 25 degrees last night, so K. laid a fire before we went to bed so he could light it first thing in the morning. I haven't had wood heat in over 25 years, so I am going to have to get back into the rthym of that. We bought two cords of stove-length wood a few weeks ago and I bought a small hatchet yesterday so we could make kindling. What we forgot we needed are fireplace tools! A poker, a tong, a shovel and an ash bucket (on the never-ending shopping list).

The house will stay quite warm for awhile by itself from the heat radiating up from the earth through the tile floors, all the southern-facing windows and the passive-solar greenhouse. It is still getting up into the 70's during the days, so I think it will be a little while yet before we experience the true bone-chilling cold up here in the high desert.

Oh yeah, we need to buy a bunch of weatherstripping too.