Burned out

I just can't get blogging this morning. Actually I guess it's already this afternoon. I think I've overdone it with the leaf demolition. I made this pact with myself to spend a couple of hours raking and burning every time I have a day off, until the bloody job is done. Often it rains enough so I can put it off with a clear conscience since wet leaves make smokebombs, not bonfires. But this week I worked at it two days in a row and I feel like I've been hit by a truck this morning. It's kind of horrifying to realize how out of shape I am. Sh*t, when I lived on the farm, I could have dispatched the whole lot in a day. Of course, I was 20 years younger then.

The photo is of my best fire yet. I didn't have high hopes for that one, this was a pile of brush and leaves I had piled up in the back yard sometime in June and never got around to burning. It was pretty well soggy but all that Girl Scout training came in handy. I built that pile with precision, there was just enough of a breeze to keep it going without burning down the neighborhood and the judicious addition of dry leaves kept it going. I don't know if you can tell there were some major branches in that one. You could almost call them logs but as you can see they all burned down and there was a good flame even at the very end.

I keep thinking I should just hire some kids to finish it all at once, but I need the exercise and I do so love a good bonfire.