My husband is hot, hot, hot

(I think he may kill me if he sees that anytime soon.)

When the land was first cleared for this house a year ago, a bulldozer was brought in, a bunch of trees knocked down, and all was pushed into a clearing away from the house. In the course of negotiations to buy the house, the builder politely declined our request to remove the debris.

Once we moved in, the brush pile grew. We knocked down some trees. (That's the french "we," thank you very much.) Robert cleared more brush out from the trees near the house, and who knows what else was stuck in there. The pile was big to begin with and got a lot bigger.

We'd been under a burning ban for some time, but Robert was just itching to get rid of some of it. He's had a few small fires but he was tired of messing around. We had rain over the weekend, it's been quite cool, and we had no wind--today was the day. We have to call the sheriff's office (or someone) to let them know we'll be burning. I guess it's so they don't send the volunteer fire department out.



Figuring this would fall under Fire Science 101, I convinced Trevor to join in the fun. (Unfortunately, he soon convinced himself otherwise.)



I offered Robert moral support and water when it wasn't conflicting with taking pictures.

We knew it couldn't all burn today, but it was soon obvious that more had to be burning anyway, and pile number two was set.



Rob was out there most of the day. I dropped in occasionally, offering that moral support. "Good job, honey! Eew! It smells like smoke here! Eek, WHY does it keep following ME? I don't want to smell like SMOKE! Ash is getting on my clothes! Do you need anything, honey? Water to drink? Uh, okay, I'll bring you some in a little bit. Bye!"

I haven't been by the creek in several weeks. I walked around by myself in the woods. It was quite a different view now that all the leaves are down. I peeked through the trees and could see all the smoke. And flames.

"Hon? You doing okay up there? Just let me know if you need anything!"