Burn, baby, burn!

When I was a young boy, I remember watching my grandpa burn a ditch. It was fascinating to me, watching the fire consume the dry, dead weeds. Even more interesting to me was hearing Grandpa tell me that the fire would damage and kill the living weeds and that another burning in a week or so would finish clearing the ditch for the water.

I remember smelling the pungent, acrid odor and watching the little tongues of fire consuming the weeds. I also remember watching Grandpa, shovel in hand, as he guided the fire, ensuring that it went only where he desired it to go, extinguishing renegade flames with a spadefull of dirt.

Those memories came flooding back today as I burned weeds in my back yard. When I say "yard," I mean "patch of dirt behind my house." There is still a lot of landscaping to be done.

My wife had raked up the dead weeds and other debris that had littered our back yard and had made a couple of rather large piles. Instead of loading the piles into a wheelbarrow and trying to stuff them into our garbage containers, I decided to reduce the amount of material that would eventually end up in the garbage by burning a large portion of it.

Me manly man! Me make FIRE!

I initially lit the corner of a large pile, and immediately, I could see that I would soon have a raging inferno if I didn't do something, and FAST. I quickly shoveled the burning portion into its own mini-pile which, fanned by a slight wind, quickly burned all of the dry, dead weeds. I then continued to slowly add small piles of weeds to the burning embers left behind.

My sons watched the flames with delight and asked hundreds of questions and wanted to help, much like I did with my grandpa some thirty years ago. I hope that future smells of weeds burning will evoke happy memories of childhood for them like it did for me today.