New heat source

It is just over a year ago that we moved to this house. It took some getting used to, but I like it very much. Most of all my sewing room. At the farm it used to get very cold in the winter, here it is nice and cosy. What I did not like was the heating system. This big house was heated by electricity. We looked around ( or mostly me) and decided on a geothermal system. And last Thursday, right in the middle of the first snow storm of the year, it was time to start the digging. A small high hoe started digging a trench from the house, around the back of the house to the end of the yard. I had moved some of the perenials, but I could not save all of them and a few of the roses did not make it back into the ground. Out at the edge of the yard a bigger high hoe started to make 3 deep trenches. Each had 2 loops of pipe at the bottom. The 6 loops were hooked up to the loop from the house. The pipes were filled with a mixture of ethanol and water. The heat in the ground will warm up this mixture and that will heat the house. Right now the fellows are hooking up the water heater. This will pre-heat the water to around 40 degrees. As you can see it make a big mess. At the end everything was back filled as much as possible, but with the bad weather and the snow we were getting, it was hard. Friday the furnaces were switched and we did without heat for a day, but right now the new system is working fine. We still have more snow coming down. At least the wind has calmed down.

A few weeks ago I was at the local grocery store and noticed a large group of amarillis bulbs. These had been in boxes and had started to grow in the boxes. The floral department had potted some of them up and they were on sale for 50% off. First I bought one for my mother in law, then went back and found this one with 2 buds. Right now the first stem with 5 blooms is in full bloom with the second one not far behind. Very Christmas like