Frost and Fire ~ Indian Summer

This October is proving to be another beautiful autumn.  The weather has turned again giving us a week of Indian Summer weather which is perfect for enjoying the last of the garden chores.

My dahlias survived several frosts and these frosts have had a beautiful effect on the trees.  Two of our yard trees have opposite patterns of leaf color.  The Firepit Maple turns yellow on the outside from the top down.

And Ole Hickory turns on the inside from the bottom up.

Each fall we always end up with a burn pile.  Each year we think we have done all of the major clearing and maintenance and this will be a year where we do not use the chain saw or create a burn pile.  We are always mistaken.

We waited until we had a cool rainy stretch, and at the end of it, when all of the grass is well saturated, we light the fire. My husband squirts Kerosene on it while we light it, and I apply the leaf blower and it instantly springs to life.  This pile six feet tall and very compact because twice as we were building it we crushed it down with the tractor loader.

We chose a beautiful clear day in the mid-40s with no breeze to speak of.  Burning in the cool weather of autumn is so much easier on the fire tenders than say July with the heat and humidity.

A fire such as this requires constant attendance for one to two hours.  I put my flame resistant hoodie on and we take turns raking with a leaf rake to get the loose leaves and twigs back towards the bare ground beneath the fire to prevent the grass from catching.  I remember one fire when conditions were much drier when we filled the tractor loader with water and used watering cans to douse the surrounding grass.  The ground is squishy at this point so there is little danger of the grass supporting much flame.

10 minutes

Even when the flames diminish, it is throwing heat off that you do not want to get your face close to.

20 Minutes

As the center burns we use a metal garden rake so push the unburned ends of limbs into the fire.

40 Minutes

The fire reduces to a manageable size quite quickly, and we enjoy sitting out in the nice weather.  Back when I built my potting bench and compost sifter from a pile of scrap wood, we still had a few boards leftover.  From that we built three simple camp stools to replace the stools that had rotted away over the last twenty years.

It is so peaceful out here watching the golden leaves drift lazily to the ground.

After an hour and a half the fire can be left unattended.  We continue to check back through the afternoon, pushing ends into the center and stirring the coals.  By morning this will be a cold pile of ash with nothing identifiable left.

The next morning there was a colder frost, and my Dahlias are beginning to die.

Next chore: digging dahlias