Pyro-Therapy 1

I have four days off in a row. It’s the first time in over two years I’ve had four days off in a row at my own disposal.

Yeah, I got vacation last year, but it all got tied up in my father’s death and funeral and in ensuring that my mother received the right care.

So four days seems like an endless stretch to me.

I cut the yard and mulched and fertilized the roses. The weather report keeps promising, “Rain, heavy at times.” It hasn’t materialized yet, but, when it does, it should help the mulch and fertilizer do their thing.

Then I indulged what my brother calls “the family predilection for pyromania.” Back on Pine View Farm, there was no trash collection; we burned our trash, and what we couldn’t safely burn, we took to the local dump.

Then times changed, and the dump became a landfill, but there is still no trash collection. We burn the trash and, what cannot be burned gets taken to the local “collection center.”

The neatest chore of all was burning the trash. And my Daddy burned everything: branches, stumps, brush, fallen trees, whatever. If it didn’t want to catch, he’d help it along with a little gasoline. If he wanted to burn something, by God, it burned!

In my little corner of Delaware, open burning is legal, so long as one does not burn household trash or leaves. And the ban on open burning because of a lack of rain was removed early this week.

So today I burned all the sticks and branches that have accumulated throughout the winter. I burned the Christmas tree. And I burned the doghouse.

Now, no dog ever slept in that doghouse. My ex insisted on getting the doghouse when we got the dog who passed on two years ago, but he was an inside dog, frankly, I don’t think he ever entered it.

But I slept in it several times. It was a little short, but with the right sleeping bag, it wasn’t too bad.

Over the years, though, it gradually fell apart. But it sure burned good.

Frankly, I’m glad it’s gone. Watching it disappear into the flames, feeling the heat of the fire, and poking about in the ashes—there’s something to be said for pyro-therapy.