Tuesday 24 March 2015

Pricked, burnt and smoked - or how I burnt down an acre between our vineyard and the forest.



Guess what I did! :D I burnt an acre of wild growth on the rim of our forest! :D
This morning was the first time after eons for the General to go to work and so instantly I got lonely and the house was too big. Nobody with the synched biorhythm shooed me from the toilet when I peed, nobody shooed me out of the bathroom when I brushed my teeth to shower, nobody wanted me to make hardcore coffee only for me to make him decaf… The house was quiet and vast.. :(  A week ago dad asked me to come help out a bit, though, which of course everyone forgot by now, but I decided to take him on the offer and grabbed the mutt, hiked uphill and woke everybody. Let’s do something menial!
Dad is clearing out an acre which hasn’t been touched in over twenty years or even more I think. It is slow going and everything is thorny – the bushes, the trees and the vines. Vines would put Sleeping Beauty’s castle problems to shame. At some point I had to crawl over them to get to a plastic bucket and it looked for a moment that I was going to get stuck. Not much of me was left unscratched, save for my butt, thanks to my iron-clad wool grannies. (Kidding.)
At some point, after I burnt a few small fires to deal with rotten logs and trash, dad asked if I would burn the entire acre free of the vines and bushes. It wasn’t too windy, just enough for me to make a plan: I am fairly versed in burning things, even if everyone who every burnt the city to the ground could claim the same thing. But I did well, I was consta controlling the slow burn, starting in the upper corner, so it spread gradually downwards, towards the forest. In the end the acre was covered in soot and blackened trees (it burnt too quickly to really do any damage to the trees. Dad will take those down for logs for firewood.)
And that is how I got pricked, burnt (I stood close a couple of times and so now my face and hands are a bit pink and hot :D ) and smoked. Have taken a shower since and I still smell of smoke.

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