Cool Day Yard Clean Up
/We had a few mornings that started out in the 50s. I chose one of them to clean up the accumulated pile of sticks and branches (mostly forsythia but some redbud, maple, and hackberry) on the patio under my deck. The pile has been accumulating all during the summer and was, mostly, dry enough to burn easily although there were dried leaves attached to some of the branches.
I put a small pile of dry grass in the bottom of the chiminea and then piled on some bundled sticks before using a fireplace lighter to ignite the grass. The blaze started and I kept it going by feeding in more bundles of twigs. The bundles are mostly from a branch that I break and turned back on itself enough times to produce a bundle that would fit into the chiminea easily. I learned to sit down for much of the bundle creation to keep my back from hurting too soon/much.
The pile was large, and I realized after an hour or so of burning, that the ashes were building up in the chiminea and were taking up too much space to easily fit in more bundles to burn. Most of the branches were small diameter…but there were a lot of them and ashes built up. I closed the screen on the chiminea and watched as the flames died down and then the red glow begin to fade.
I stirred the ashes to try to make sure the sticks burned as completely as possible. It will be a few days before the ashes are cool enough to remove from the chiminea….and then I can clean up the last of the accumulated sticks and branches.
