Waking up this morning, the first thing that struck me was the dew. Or rather, the lack of it. No dew had fallen overnight. I wonder if the clear weather will last, if I can even call it 'weather' when it seems so unnatural.

Then I quickly noticed that the great stone doors were open. I didn't hear them, so I assume I slept very soundly last night, no doubt due to the work I did lifting supplies out of the Box. Speaking of which, the Box is still there. Turns out my alarm was for nothing after all.

Looking at my makeshift 'bed', walls of crates around my blanket, I know I'll need a better arrangement. Over in the edge of the forest, I can see something rather bovine. Several somethings. I think there is a herd of cattle there, and I've seen several chickens running about. If I can find where they lay their eggs, then I'll have another supply of food. If I can milk the cows too, that's great.

The crates are currently in no order, I just piled them up as I came to them last night. I think I'll take a walk around my new home first, then sort the crates and take stock of my supplies.

A young forest covers about half of the perimeter, tall trees that seem only five years old at best. The trees are a type I don't know, which irritates me no end. I think in my previous life I specialised in plants, because my brain is filled with images about gardening.

Knowing about gardening may serve me very well in this new life. If there is seeds in one of the crates, I'll be able to supply myself with fresh veges.

There's plenty of room for gardening, because almost half of the place is grassy. The grass is a nice one, too. Not stoloniferous or rhizomatous, it grows smoothly but should be easy to remove for garden beds. And, though I cannot remember my last name, I can remember that stolons and rhizomes are the horizontal stems growing above and below ground, that spread the plant sideways. They make awful weeds.

The only supply of water is a small spring to one side, which runs into a muddy pond for the animals. If I want to water my garden, my choices are either to carry buckets of water, although I didn't see any buckets in my supplies, or try to set up an irrigation channel. Heaven only knows how I'll manage that.

The chickens are a nice sized flock, and completely unafraid of me, but not especially tame. I found one nest, but only one egg in it. I doubt the chickens are bred for high egg production, and if I want to get a good number of eggs I'll need to create an enclosure and nest-boxes for them.

The cows are gentle, strong creatures, and there's about nine of them. Including the bull, and five young calves, that's fifteen large animals, and I need to keep them away from my food, or I shall wake up one day to find a fat cow and no food for me. I've also seen a couple of woolly sheep, so hopefully I'll be able to shear them later.

I have the choice of either fencing an area for my garden and storage, or fencing an area for the animals. I have no idea how I'm to make such a fence, but I'll work that out later. For now, I'm going to eat lunch and take stock of my supplies.

Of clothes, I have what I came up in, being a long-sleeved top and trousers, plus underwear. In one crate is two more changes of clothes and more underwear. Alas, no more blankets, but if it gets any colder at night I could wear more than one layer.

I've also found several sharp knives, a saw, and many long skeins of rope. I have seeds for what is either lettuce or carrots, beans, peas, and pumpkins. The seeds aren't labelled, but beans, peas and pumpkins are very distinctive seed shapes. I'm guessing the fine, light long seeds are either carrots or lettuce, because there's no reason for me to have thistle seeds, and they all look alike.

I'm definitely going to need to build both a house and many fences. It's tempting to use my shiny new saw and slice planks from fallen trees in the forest, but, thinking about it, that's not going to work. The amount of planks it would take to build a small house is just too many. If I blunt my saw, then I'm stuck.

Going for another walk in the forest, I have a new idea. The youth of the forest could work in my favour. Towards the middle, the trees grow tall and straight as they try to reach the sunlight, but their trunks are still skinny enough that I can fit my hands around them. If I cut lots of them, I could stack them and weave rope between them to make a solid wall, without hours of sawing away. It would also give much more insulation than skinny planks.

If I do that, the finer branches could be both woven with the rope to fill in gaps, but also used to make a fence for the animals. I think the best idea is to fence the animals away, and that also has the bonus of controlling where the chickens lay their eggs.

I just caught a chicken trying to get into my box of seeds, so I'd better tie the food crates up in trees out of reach of the animals, or I won't have any left by morning. The light is fading, and the doors just began to close, so after my food is safe I think I'll eat and go to bed. One downside of the strange weather is the almost total darkness at night. No moonlight, not even any starlight.

I wonder what it is that makes the groaning noises outside the walls? Whatever it is, I don't think I want to meet it.