With temps supposedly heading for the high 30’s tonight, we heading squarely into fire-starting territory. This actually won’t be the 1st one of the season, but the third. The past week or so has been beautiful weather up here, with low humidity and comfortable temps in the low 70’s. We’ve had a couple nights where temps dropped down into the low 40’s, which is also fire-starting temperatures. I took care of getting those fires going.
The boy took care of tonight’s.
This afternoon, I chopped up a bunch of the leftovers I had from the bigger operations earlier in the year. While I was doing that, I had both kids gather wood shards from around the driveway. I use those to start new fires because they’re dry and small- perfect for getting a fire going. They filled one of their beach buckets with these pieces.
The boy was clearly excited about starting the fire, because he started asking me if he could do it before we’d even had dinner. He took a beating from the Wife in a game that was not Monopoly, but awfully close. After licking his wounds, he went over and decided that he was going to start the fire.
I was all set to tell him “No”, but then I thought- why? So I could have the pleasure of starting the fire, again, for the 100th time? The stove is great for saving us money on heating the house, but it’s, frankly, a pain in the ass and there’s only so much interest I can take in starting yet another fire. What harm was there in letting him try? We’ve got insurance…
The lass was immediately jealous, and tried to insert herself into her brother’s operation. But there’s only so much room and she quickly realized that her brother had the driver’s seat.
So I talked him through starting it, trying to explain things so he would be able to get it going. He was over-zealous with the wood initially, putting too-large pieces on, but I got him on the right track and soon he had a flame to work with. From there, it was just a matter of containing his own exuberance so that he didn’t shove a bunch of wood on it and snuff his hard fought gains.
The next step will be to let him do it without any direction. Unfortunately, he’s still a bit young for swinging an axe; but then, he can operate the log splitter. Also, he’s still a bit intimidated by the fire for loading logs, but if I play my cards right (and contain my own exuberance) maybe I won’t have to start any fires this year.