On Being a Campfire Girl...

Here is one of the things I get to do because I live in Point Roberts: fall and spring burning.  The photo, of course, last week's fall burning.  What with an acre of land, and dozens of trees and bushes, there is more than enough prunings and fallen branches and weeds in general and canes from numerous plants (raspberries, Japanese knotweed, etc.) to make it possible to burn for about 8 hours at a time.

Ed chose a sunny, wind-less day to get it all started up and then we dragged things to the fire all day long Usually, I don't get too much involved in this because usually we schedule this when there are grandchildren around.  These are city children who think being allowed to burn things is an amazing amount of freedom.  (But they were all in school this week.)

And, of course, they're right about the freedom.  The reason we get to do this in Point Roberts is because it's not a city where they couldn't possibly allow it.  Furthermore, the local trash haulers would be appalled at the idea of their having to pick up all this yard trash and dispose of it themselves.  So we get to do it ourselves.  This is a mixed blessing, of course.  You get to do it, but you also have to do it if you have much land at your disposal.

And so you pick a day when there is no wind and maybe even the threat of a little rain (without wind), and you buy yourself a 2-day burn permit for $5 (Ed says $3 for 3 days) from the local hardware store, post it at the front of your property, and you burn, and burn, and burn.  Fortunately, I was a campfire girl as a kid and a camp counsellor later and one of my jobs was to get fires to burn.  Of course, since I've lived here, I've also had the opportunity to live with a wood stove for heat (not now, but originally) which means even more opportunity to exercise those campfire skills.

Still, on the whole, I wish somebody would just come and take all this yard trash away, instead.