I Guess You Really DO Need to Let the Wood Dry First

We’ve made some progress this week!

Last night, just before dark, Aaron, our neighbor’s grown son, showed up with some guys from the volunteer fire department and announced “tonight’s the night.” Fortunately, Ed had just returned from picking up our burn permit and some diesel fuel, so we were ready. Next thing we knew, there were at least ten members of the volunteer fire and rescue department, plus two fire trucks, cheerfully shooting the breeze around our brush pile. Despite their best efforts, the newer wood and branches (the larger part of the pile) did not burn very well (you were right, Daddy), but they did get the “aged” parts, which happened to be closest to trees. They left the fire smoldering, and told Ed that he should get some more diesel and keep the thing going. Ed and Dan have been pouring on the fuel today, and Dan made the interesting discovery that diesel and gasoline mixed together form a very smelly adhesive, but actual progress in reducing the heap has been slow. I suspect that we will eventually have to pay Wayne to use his little bulldozer to push the whole mess off to one side of the yard to age for a few years (and form a lovely habitat for snakes and rodents).

Our front porch project proceeded with more success. Wayne came yesterday (hooray!) and cleaned out the bits of slate and concrete that Dan hadn’t gotten. (Ed and I used the new wagon, hitched to the back of the lawnmower, to move all the slate back behind the garage – yay us!) He was a bit disappointed to find that the slate had been set on sand, not dirt, over some concrete which had shifted and cracked, but he dug out the sand and, today, the concrete was poured! The front porch now meets the house (no more crack directing the water down and into our basement) and is angled so that the water drains away from the house. I wrote our names in the concrete (of course), and it looks beautiful.

The picture of Ed and the kids is to show our new wagon, which Ed bought to pull things (like logs and big pieces of slate) around the yard. The kids think it is great!