Fi-yuh!!!

With the weather being so nice this spring, my husband and I have gotten a good jump on cleaning up the grounds around the house in preparation for a summer of cooking on the grill, having friends over and just hanging out on the deck on cool summer eves. This is a very good thing because, with things as they are, hiring the local illegal immigrants to blow the leaves away and lift the many branches and acorns that have covered what is left of our grass is out of the question. And it’s not like we have a lot of property – just over half an acre – but we are surrounded by trees. Not little trees. Big, mother trees! Old trees. With limbs that break and crash down on things like our deck, our car, our friends… Consequently, we have amassed an inordinate amount of dry leaves and firewood. The leaves get blown into the woods and the firewood is designated for either the fireplace in the living room or the copper cook stove near the deck that keeps us warm and entertained after a hard day’s work. We built such a fire yesterday afternoon, enjoyed a well-earned cocktail, and left the embers safely smoldering in the cook stove until the last of the twigs and logs had disintegrated into ash. Then we had dinner, watched TV, went to bed, woke up, went to the gym, and came home. I worked on the computer while my husband called the insurance company, found a new eye doctor, made an appointment and THEN headed outside to do more yard work. It didn’t strike me as unusual when I smelled the smoke. And, engrossed as I was in watching a video of a very odd production of a high school play, it just seemed like the usual minor annoyance when I heard my husband calling my name. Well, he wasn’t actually “calling” my name. He was screaming it… several times. “Kate!” “What?” “Kate!!” What?!” “Kate!!!!!!” I finally got the computer to pause, set it aside, and turned to scream “What?” out the bedroom window, when I noticed the 10 foot flames shooting from the ravine behind the house where he had assiduously blown a lot of the leaves and then dumped the ashes from yesterday’s fire. “Call the fire department!!!!” I didn’t see my husband but his voice seemed to be coming in from every window and door as he ran around the outside of the house trying to figure out how to turn on the garden hose. 911 answered immediately and the volunteer fire department was instantly dispatched. We could hear the trucks driving past our house because Mapquest and the GPS maps of this neighborhood are all wrong. I ran out on the road while my husband continued to struggle with the water supply, flagged down the town truck that had noticed the smoke even though it was where the map said it wouldn’t be, and then he directed the others to our house via his walkie-talkie. The flames were now consuming an area about 30 feet wide and were licking at interesting trees along the ravine. Long story short, about a dozen fire-fighters and several trucks with much better equipment than our gnarly garden hose put the fire out and graciously acknowledged that it could have happened to anyone. Who could suppose that an ember in a cold cook-stove could survive 18 hours, overnight, in 40 degree weather, to spark a conflagration that could have consumed the entire neighborhood had we dumped it anywhere but into that ditch? The fire-fighters left. I returned to my computer and my husband blew more leaves from the front of the house back into the woods. Still, when the work day was done, we had our cocktail without a fire in the cook stove tonight. The weather forecast is for three days of rain. Good.

Post script: Before dinner, we ran out to the supermarket for a few items, returning to discover that I had left a pot of water boiling on the stove. Luckily, there was enough water in the pot that it didn't burn the house down. Still, how embarrassing would THAT have been?! Duh...