The New Firebowl

New firebowl

The firebowl I dug and built, obscured with brush and fallen wood, was a disheartening sight because I love a nice fire for myself and guests; it's just fun to watch and poke at while enjoying adult beverages. Unable to clean it up--and I wanted it moved a couple of feet over--without a chainsaw, I hired Patrick to do it, and not only did he dig and build a handsome new bowl out of stone I'd thrown behind the garage, but chopped and stacked all the fallen and mostly rotted wood, and I will burn some as soon as it stops raining and the wind dies down and I rake for quite a radius beyond the firebowl because there's fallen oak leaves an inch thick from autumn. I don't want to catch a spark.

The property could actually use a controlled burn to eliminate briars and brushy understory, but that won't happen. Meanwhile I'd cogitated on the fact that I'll probably be home more often during this administration and entertain more people, and the firebowl is a fine enhancement as well as potentially useful.

Old firebowl

Here are "after" and "before" pictures, with the "after" picture first, because if I put the "before" first nobody would know what it was. The old firebowl was encircled partly with sawn hunks of wood and partly with concrete and stone. Patrick, camera-shy, would not pose with his handiwork.

New firebowl with woodpile

Mistress of the Flames

Demetrius used to share with me the heavy work of winterizing. Today while I taped plastic sheets over the windows and whipped weeds and moved bags of birdseed and cat litter (not salt; I have a creek to take care of) and put snow shovels onto the porch and sprayed the locks with graphite, I grieved because he didn't like living, finding humanity grossly corrupt and offensive. He wanted to turn back time to 1956 when he was a child and all was perfect. After he died I cried only once: When the radio played the musical children's tale "Tubby the Tuba" and I knew he would have loved it.

Well, now I am single so I do it all. Single is fine. I do what I want, go where I want, and spend all my money on myself. But it's not like you can ask friends to help you winterize. So I covered the plant beds in drifts of fallen leaves, and cleared the roof, lawn and walkways of fallen and broken limbs and branches, chopped and sawed them if they were too heavy to drag, then dragged them into a pile near the fire bowl. Oh yeah, and I got the stepladder and sprayed the satellite dish with Pam because HughesNet told me it keeps ice from sticking on it. Fortunately it was 56 degrees F, my kind of December 3, and I decided to make my first fire on my own. Before today I'd never had the urge or the heart. Kept bringing it fallen branches and raked-up leaves; it was ravenous for them and the larger the fire the more I was cheered, and began to hear in my mind the lyrics "See the blazing Yule before us," and "heedless of the wind and weather."

This Will Fry Your Brain

Burning the excess brush cut down on Christmas day (pictured), I thought, "a bonfire." Then I wondered, "What's the difference between a bonfire and a regular fire?" Looked it up.

bon-fire. Middle English bonefire, banefire, originally a fire of bones.
1. A fire for consuming bones, hence: a. (Obs.) A fire for burning corpses. b. A fire for burning heretics, or articles under proscription. c. A fire for burning brush or rubbish.
2. A large fire built in the open air (orig. on certain anniversaries, esp. the eves of St. Peter and St. John), as an expression of public joy, for sport, etc.

Quite a history. The fire here is definition 1.c. With the surrounding brush cleared and flattened, this spot suddenly became perfect for a permanent firebowl. Everyone liked this idea, and friends carried concrete blocks and helped me to establish it on Saturday (and stayed here half the night feeding and enjoying the fire). Happy New Year and stay warm.