I stayed home Sunday afternoon while Lloyd went to graduation and several parties, and after a splendid two-hour nap, I decided to get some burnin’ done.
Our maple trees are littering the neighborhood with their many, many seeds. I swept a bunch of them into the fire pit and thought this would be a quick burn. I had all kinds of safety plans – a small can filled with bacon grease to do a small, continuous fire (it was pretty windy and I didn’t want flaming whirlibirds setting fire to the neighborhood), and plenty of water on standby to extinguish anything that got out of control.
Not. Necessary.
Nothing would burn! I lost my mojo! We’ve had a fair amount of rain lately but these seemed pretty dry. The ‘leaf’ of the seed would flare, then the seed wouldn’t. I guess that makes sense since it’s full of juicy baby tree. Anyway, when the can wouldn’t work, I just started making a fire on top of the seeds, thinking that would work.
It didn’t.
For an hour I sat in a smokey pile of embarrassment, trying to ignore the neighbors talking across the yard – mostly likely about my failure of a fire. (Yes, the world revolves around me. It makes travel difficult.)
What’s wrong, fire? Aren’t we friends anymore?