First Big Snow

Sunday evening:

Monday morning:

Our little controlled burn

In spite of having fires in the fireplace every day, we still have a lot of wood on the ground outside.  Jane considers this one pile of medium to small sticks to be particularly ugly, so we decided to burn it.  With all the trees about and dead leaves on the ground, we did not want to do it ourselves, so we called the fire department.

Three guys came out today at 4pm (fires are allowed after 4pm).  Two of the guys were young, and are presumably paid by Augusta County.  The old geezer is a volunteer.  They all came from the Middlebrook Station.

Here is the original pile.  It was around 2 square yards.  Not quite as big as Matt's 856 acres.

Blowing dead leaves away.

Pouring on the gasoline.

The firemen left when it was pretty much burned down, and I said I would put it out with our garden hose, which I did.

Roaring Fires

This winter, we have been having fires most days.  Although this has not been a particularly cold winter, we are saving some heating bills and using up a little of the wood that falls out of the sky here.  And, it makes the house feel snug.  This morning the wind chill was zero degrees.

Maggie's bamboo wind chime

We just made and hung a bamboo wind chime to provide Music for Maggie's garden.

February Garden Pictures

It is Jane's plan to take pictures of the garden at the beginning of each month.  They will show the progress made possible by Jane's efforts as well as mother nature.