Fire Flower
Yesterday Ben and I cleaned the chimney and today I lit the first fall fire to inaugurate the winter of 2015-2016. We’ve been having a pleasantly warm fall and this is quite late for first fire. Usually I clean the chimney around November 1st in preparation for the coming cold season.
The sunflower above is a reminder of even warmer days. Now they have mostly been eaten by the pigs and chickens – the few that remain are drab brown heads.
We grow a lot of sunflowers. They’re easy to grow, produce well in our soils and climate and the pigs enjoy them in the fall. And they’re beautiful.
Outdoors: 42°F/28°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 54°F/59°F in my bedroom where the thermometer is but 75°F in the common room with the wood stove
Daily Spark: On land we have lots of space to waste. Houses are big with huge floor plans. On ships we have tight quarters where every nook and cranny is put to use, often to double or triple uses. Everything in its place and a place for everything. It is so ironic that in space we have so little space.
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
regarding your spark: You may have to re-launch your house into space someday, I always enjoyed the articles where you could see the starscape out the windows ;)
Me too! :)
I cleaned our chimney recently too. An annual chore I do not look forward to. It doesn’t sound like much, 28 feet of Chimney, but it seems like a lot perched on the peak of a steeply pitched slate roof pulling that fiber glass rod up and down. Particularly when it seems stuck and drastic measures might be needed.
Charles, can you create a Tee access port, or better yet a Wye, where you can clean from the safety within the attic?
Ah chimney cleaning. Fortunately for me, something that I am more than willing to pay someone else to do (I don’t have a long enough ladder and I don’t like heights).
And even more fortunately….something that I don’t have to do at all since the current fireplace is boarded up, out of commission, and both the furnace and water heater are direct-vent. :-)