nb. some men are from Venus: Evening in the Kitchener Community Garden

Surreal, I know, but I did indeed enjoy a bath in the Kitchener Community garden late yesterday evening. In celebration of the extra hour's light and with James Ayrton gracing us with his presence, we decided to light up the hobo stove. During the day Luke and Ben had made some excellent progress on the stove adding a chimney and plating off the old top hole. We then ground down the top surface to remove the paint and gave it a good clean to prepare the cooking surface.

As it got dark we fired her up with lots of wood that Luke had broken up. As it warmed I oiled the top surface and built up the wok-like patina. I then got a couple of eggs, some sliced courgettes and tomatoes as well as some bread and fried it all up with some oil on the stove. It tasted awesome - the stove works!

We played around for some hours and tried to construct a rudimentary heat exchanger out of some old copper piping in order to fill our garden bath. Unfortunately we only succeeded in raising the temperature from outside-tab-cold to tepid warm. Not bad, but not that great either. So with a couple of buckets of hot water from inside I was ready to have a bath in the garden (wearing swimming shorts of course). I tell you it was a strangely satisfying experience. I've longed to have a bath in my house for three years and finally my wish came true. Not only that, but I enjoyed it at eye level with the daffodils. Wonderful :)

The newly chimneyed hobo stove