vituperation

Over the last several weeks, we’ve spent a lot of time outside, working on shaping the Smallville property to our liking. Cutting down trees and bushes, whacking weeds, and raking leaves are among some of the things we’ve done. All those activities generate trash.

Organic trash.

Burnable trash.

Friday morning, we decided it was time to start the burning. Having never set (intentionally, that is) a big fire outside, we started with one of the small piles of limbs and leaves. Because it hasn’t rained in about ten days, everything was nice and dry and lit right up. We tried to burn this same pile a couple of weeks ago with very poor results.

Last time, I used a whole container of charcoal starter and a couple of Solo cups full of gasoline and still couldn’t get the damn thing to start. Same thing when we tried to burn some leaves. It was just too damn wet.

I didn’t even need an accelerant, just a couple of paper towels and some cardboard.

All day Friday we added stuff to the pile.

I liked the look of the smoke among the limbs of the trees.

And added, and added.

While the fire burned, I put the tiller on the tractor and tilled up all the ground around the shed, where we cleared out all the fence posts and undergrowth last month. Once the ground (and tiny vines, my actual target) was broken up, I used the loader to smooth it all down and contoured a better drain path to the ditch at the edge of the property.

I’d show you a picture of my handiwork, but I forgot to take one.

We stopped at the corner store on the way back to suburbia Friday evening, so I could try and glean some information about the abandoned house across the street from the old-timers. No one could remember how long it had been since anyone lived in the house (”a long time”), and they told me the name of the owner, which I already knew. Still, it was a beneficial stop, as it lets us all get to know one another. This is good, because I’m just a couple of years away from being an old-timer myself.

Saturday morning, it was time to light the big burn pile, which was about 25 feet across and 10 feet tall. I bought 300 feet of hose so I’d be ready with water if there was any trouble, expecting to get a real inferno. In case you didn’t know, trying to stretch out 300 feet of hose full of water? Hard work. It was like trying to pull a train car, practically.

Perhaps that’s an exaggeration.

Part of the burn pile, pre-match. The white in the center is the piece of cardboard for starting it.

And post-match.

It burned…

…and burned…

…but this is as close as I could get it to an inferno.

It was hot as hell, even though it never got really big.

I spent Saturday afternoon moving stuff from the non-burning part of the burn pile to the burning part, and made a very interesting discovery: the “burn pile” was mostly dirt, concrete, tin, and wire, none of which are known for their burnability. Let me clarify. Everything we added to the burn pile was burnable. Because the old owners told us it was a burn pile they’d never gotten around to burning. If I’d known the burn pile wasn’t really a burn pile, I’d have made them get it off the property before closing.

Guess who gets to pay for someone to haul it away now?

Before we left on Saturday, I took the tractor and scraped about three feet of bare earth all the way around the burn pile. Then, I put out the flames and soaked it down. I knew there was no way I could entirely put it out, but by God I’d make it harder for it to flame up and burn Smallville to the ground. That wouldn’t be a good way to get in good with the neighbors.

I went next door to let him know that there were embers out in the field and leave our number with him in case there were any problems, but he didn’t answer the door. I could see his car in the driveway and knew he had to be there, so I shifted a little on the porch to get a better view through the glass of the front door.

And the motherfucker was sitting there watching TV not ten feet away, kicked back in a recliner with his legs splayed and one hand resting on his groin.

I knocked again, louder, and watched him ignore me some more.

“Fuck it,” I said, and left. I might have thought something un-Fred-like about his house burning down.

When I told Robyn what he did, she laughed and said he was our kind of people since we (she!) never answers the door either.

“But at least we have the good sense to hide!” I said, indignant. “We don’t just flaunt it when someone knocks.”

There was actually a tiny flame burning when we returned on Sunday, and I was able to stir it up into a nice hot fire. I spent most of the day scrounging the pile for burnables and dragging fallen limbs (with the tractor, woot!) from the perimeter of the property.

Still burning.

Lesson learned from burning: burn pile fires pretty much stay in their little circle. I fully expected the fire to try and rage out of control, racing across our property to set the whole town on fire, but I only had to stamp out one little finger of fire that moved out of the circle. I’m glad to know that.

The burn pile in its final state, ready to be loaded into a dump truck

I don’t know if I shared this before or not, and I’m too lazy to go back and look, but I did finally get a solution to the problem of those heavy (back-breakingly so) tractor implements, courtesy of the fine folks at a tractor forum.

Hello, dolly!

I’ve mentioned on multiple occasions what a worrywart I am. Two of my newest reasons for worrying have taken up residence at the Smallville house.

Mom, aka “Maxi”, “Mama”, “Mom Cullen”

Dad, aka “Newt”, “Newton”, “Newtie”

You may recall that I started building them a house for the front porch some time back. I worked on the house here and there, when I didn’t really have anything else to do. I finished it last week, and took it outside for them with a little trepidation.

Fortunately, the kitties love the new house. As soon as I put it out for them, they abandoned the big cardboard box with the electric blanket they’d been sleeping in and made a new home. Who can blame them, though? The new digs are quite fancy, with a removable top for easy cleaning, a heated sleeping pad, and a 60-watt bulb providing more heat from above.

There’s even some molding around the front door.

The cat house doesn’t look so great, but what do you want from someone who took the lazy way out and freehand cut (with a jigsaw, even) all the pieces of plywood for the siding. I should’ve had a table saw, but the day we looked at them at Lowe’s the one I wanted was on the top TOP shelf —the one where they need the rolling staircase to reach it—and it weighed like 300 pounds and the guy helping us was about 87 years old. So I said “fuck it, I’ll just clamp a straight edge down and use the circular saw to cut the straight lines”.

Until I did that once. Then I said “fuck it, I’ll use the jigsaw,” because I don’t have to impress the damn cats that don’t even belong to us.

Also, I totally built that from a picture in my head, without any plans or anything. As it’s the first thing I’ve ever really built, other than a stool when I was in shop class, I’m not displeased with the result.

Mama wanders out of the unpainted cat house, hoping I have some food for her.

Painting by Robyn, second coat forthcoming.

I think the new house is trying to kill me. I don’t seem to be able to go out there without sustaining some sort of injury or other pain-causing thing. This weekend, I:

• Got sunburned. Twice.
• Mashed two fingers between one of the hitch arms on the tractor and the post on the tiller. For the record, I hate the tiller, because it is evil personified. It’s ornery, fights me, and is hard as hell to hook up. Then, on the disconnect, it mooshed my fingers and made a blue mark under one fingernail. Finally, for an encore, one side slid off the dolly when I was trying to put it back in the garage and I nearly mooshed a foot trying to get it back on. Goddamn tiller.
• Picked up 50 (or more) scratches from brambles in the burn pile.
• Apparently worked most of the muscles in my body in ways they haven’t been worked recently, because I’m wicked sore.
• Picked up inexplicable bruises on my left knee and upper thigh.
• Twisted my gimpy right ankle on a clump of grass.
• Whanged my elbow on the tractor while trying to remove the side cover to get at the air filter. Another bruise.
• Strained both shoulders so bad I have to sleep on my back because I can’t lay on my side without pain.

It’s killing me slowly, but I love it.