Saturday, June 23, 2007

Another morning; yes, we're cute, and what not to do with your hot ashes

I haven't posted an early morning shot for...umm....probably a week or so, so here is an unuusal cloud formation on today's horizon. It's cold and windy and the forecast is sleety showers. Huh! Probably we'll get a 2 minute hailstorm and that's it. However, I feel disinclined to walk into town this morning to do my usual Saturday morning stroll around the shops, so I must apply myself to doing some of the 372 things on my "Create this, why don't you?" list. Not to mention the "You SHOULD be doing this stuff" list. You know...taxes, cleaning, tidying....

The poodles always seem to do this in the mornings. A bit of doggy solidarity perhaps, until they work out what I'm doing for the day? ago. At one time, they would always lunge for the camera if you tried to photograph them. Now that they are stars and get to feature on a blog read by people all over the world, I guess it's old hat.

Because I'm burning my fire pretty much night and day, there's a lot of ash buildup in the fireplace. I got my dustpan and scooped a couple of pansful of ashes out the other day. I figured it'd be safe to put it on the raised garden, as there's practically nothing in it except for that stray aubergine. I raked the ashes into the top of the soil and figured the cold would kill the odd little hot ember I could see (the fire hadn't been used for half a day).

Nope.

When I went outside a day later, I found the entire back of my garden was burnt through, including the centre post which is 3" by 3". The rails are 6 feet long, the lower one had gone entirely, and you can see there's not much left of the top one. I guess an ember had landed on the weed matting that lines the garden. This is just the left half you can see in the photo. I couldn't believe how much damage had been caused. I watered it with the hose for 5 minutes and it was still smouldering. However, because there's that little stone wall behind it, I can make it useable again. A project for my son when he comes down in a couple of weeks!
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful picture and it is cold there, it is very hot here in ALabama (USA)..do keep up with the writing I find this very interesting that you are into quilting, us true souther women love to quilt and knit you know the home things of life, I find them peaceful.
Bama bouond

His Office, My Studio said...

Great photo of the sunrise.

The pups are cute! I love all the photos of them laying next to each other.

You are so lucky the fire did spread.

Suzi-k said...

oooops!

Barbara said...

what beautiful clouds! I like looking in the sky and see clouds and..perhaps sometimes a ..rainbow!

Ali Honey said...

Close call there Shirley...that could have been far worse I guess.

Great snow photos; I enjoyed looking at Donald's shots now that I have met some of the subjects so to speak.

We have ben having howling gales for 48 hours - tree parts flying everywhere. No snow tho!

Kate said...

Been there, done that - nearly burnt down our house and next door's as well. I learnt the hard way, cold ashes are not dead ashes. Do you remember the Dustman who used to come around and collect the ashbuckets?
'My ol' man's a dustman,
he wears a dustman's hat....

Featheronawire Sally Bramald said...

It's never really cold enough here for me to have to risk throwing out warm embers. It's a joy when it's cold enough to light the fire.Then we get two or three days and it's too warm again.
Love you dogs. What size are they? I saw a super unclipped standard poodle the other day, he was simply hugable.

Shirley Goodwin said...

Frodo is 27" at the shoulder and 34" to the top of his head - if he's standing next to me, that's level with where my leg joins my torso. Cressy, being a girl, is several inches smaller.