Controlled Burn

Here on Waverly Lane, you never know what you're going to see next, and one evening about two weeks ago, I happened to notice that my shoreline was ablaze.

While most people might be startled at such a sight, my worn-down nerves knew that this was not necessarily an emergency.

(Even though to most normal people this screams, "EMERGENCY!")

Daughter and I calmly sprinted walked out the back door to take a closer look at the situation.  

Daughter shared the joyous occasion with friends via iPhone, no doubt with a comment like, "Oh, nothing, just finished up some supper and am now watching the blazing inferno that is my back yard."

You can't get this type of entertainment in the city--that's the lesson here, Daughter.

My father intentionally sets the shoreline afire every so often, for reasons that used to make sense but which now escape me. He takes a rake and delicately lifts burning brush onto the dead marsh grass. The fire usually stops where the green foliage begins (due to the moisture).

Although he's in good shape for his age, he gets winded easily, and, let's face it. He's not as agile and spry as he used to be. So I always worry.  But this time, thankfully, he came out unscathed. The fire went out in a hurry on its own, and we quickly returned to normal, frazzled nerves and all.

Things were normal for only a little while though.  Late last week as I was approaching Waverly Lane on my way home from work, I came face to face with the inevitable:  the tilling of the daffodil field in preparation for the corn crop.

The daffodil field full of bulbs way older than I am (and I'm no spring chicken either) was being changed forever.

Goodbye, daffodils. I will miss you terribly. Hello corn.

Click here for a 2011 post referencing Royal Colony Farm, the daffodil business my grandfather operated.

Click here for the 2012 version of Let's Have Fun Intentionally Setting Fires in One's Yard.

Happy Monday.

Daffodil Festival. Still.

Yes, here are more pictures from last weekend's Daffodil Festival in Gloucester.  Sorry for not changing subjects the past few days, but it's been busy here in Chesapeake Bayville.

First and foremost, the weather has been in the very sunny 80s most of the week.  Yesterday at Daughter's soccer game the temperature hit 90 degrees as we hit the school parking lot. (They lost 2-0.) The warm weather--and the looming prospect of a half-marathon in Nashville in the near future--induced me to exercise in the evenings.  I was mortified at how much endurance I've lost from being  lethargic sedentary the past few months.

With the warm weather providing the much needed jump start, I accomplished quite a bit:

• Picked up four thousand pine cones
• Cut the back yard 
• Used the leaf blower to remove the top layer of pine needles from my back deck
• Discovered parts of my deck are rotting.  Don't want to talk about it.  
• Took all my ailing plants outside for their first watering since September some sunshine and water.
• Moved the stepladder out of my foyer. It's been there for over three weeks from changing an air filter in a dining room vent so high up you need a space suit and oxygen tank to breathe properly.
• (I moved the ladder outside.  It's standing on the deck outside my bedroom.  Out of sight, out of mind. I could not face the disaster that is my garage, where the ladder is typically stored.)
• Transported the last of the Christmas and Easter decorations back down to the dungeon basement. After all, it is April. An Easter wreath, however, still hangs on the fence post at the end of my driveway.  Who wants to wager it will still be there come July 4?
• Did three loads of laundry.
• Cleaned out the refrigerator.  
• (Cleaning the refrigerator was worse than all the above mentioned chores combined, by the way.)

In spite of these accomplishments, there is still much left to do.  

In other news, my father burned the shoreline this week when I wasn't home, so there is no photographic evidence. Click here for last year's version of this annual display of pyrotechnics also known as choking the neighbors with smoke.

What's going on in your neck of the woods?

Tour de Mathews: Part III

Field down Redart

After getting caught trespassing a lovely visit at Beachland, my friend Brooks and I drove down to Redart.

High on my list of things to show him were boats, workboats in particular.

Brooks has a deep interest in workboats and found my blog googling workboat images. Over the course of many months we became friends.

BTW, some of my very best friends have come from this insane inane little blog, which is probably one of the main reasons I keep doing it.

CB Mother and Brooks discussing quantum physics.
No, really. They were.
Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, on the last night of The Tour, Brooks came over for dinner with my parents.  He was eager to meet my mother because he's a fan of her blog.

Although my  mother just as easily could have been striking a pose,
in fact she was holding her hair because of the strong winds.

After standing over a charcoal grill for a couple of days hours, I served up some hickory-infused chicken at a table with a grand view of Queens Creek.

My personal philosophy as of the past five or so years is that every day is a special occasion, so every night that the Chesapeake Bay Children and I sit down to dinner together, I light candles.

Even if it is just the three of us (and it almost always is), the candles are lit come supper time. Just ask them, they'll tell you so.

Why wait for a special occasion when that special occasion is now?

Anyway, the two candles I normally light every night were a little raggedy, so I took two votives and stuck them in lovely little seascape-decorated holders. Because they were votives (i.e. doomed to die out after an hour or two), I didn't bother blowing them out after dinner was over because, why?

I'll tell you why.

We all adjourned to the back deck. My parents sat facing the creek.  I sat to their side drinking wine .  Much to my dismay, Brooks sat facing my parents which meant he was facing the house, the kitchen and the table.

I say much to my dismay because in the bizarre little world I live in, everyone should be facing the water, absorbing its magical healing properties.  Facing my dirty, cluttered house is anything but relaxing, in my opinion.

But never mind my little world, which happens to be filled not only with special occasions every evening at supper but  also catastrophes mishaps. One or two, anyway.

No, it was a good thing Brooks was facing the table, because one minute we my mother and he were discussing quantum physics; the next minute he says, casually, "Wait.  Is something on fire?"

Indeed something was.

One of those votives somehow or another (and how this happened will never be known) not only caught the holder on fire, but the holder seemed very content and amenable to going up in flames to the point of providing a pyrotechnics show for the neighbors across the creek catching the table on fire.

When I heard the word fire, I did not panic.  These things happen.  Believe it or not, I actually tried to blow the fire out.  It should come as no surprise that the fire laughed at me to the point of hysterics.

Someone grabbed a tea towel and smacked it down.

The tea towel is scorched.

A layer of wood is seared from my table.

One cute votive holder with a seascape motif is disintegrated.

And a good time was had by all.

The End.

Taken from New Point Campground, where my friend stayed this weekend.
This was before the fire, as a point of reference.
The calm before the fire, if you will.

Controlled Burn

Once upon a time, on the very first Monday of the new time change, Chesapeake Bay Woman struggled to get up at 5:30, drove bleary-eyed the hour to work, survived a rather hectic day, drove the hour home, and did what everyone else in America would do at the conclusion of such a long, arduous day.

No pine trees were killed in this incident, although the flames licked their lower limbs.

She watched her father drive over on his Cub Cadet and intentionally set fire to a brush pile and then to the entire shoreline in her back yard.

Because that's what we do around here for entertainment .

The fire spread quickly through the dry, crispy marsh grass and brush along the shore.

Fire Marshal Twinkie the cat was entirely unimpressed.  Here he glances away from the fire as he considers taking up residence where the humans act more civilized, such as the Saluda jail.

Here is my 71-year-old father, the King of Shoreline Pyrotechnics.There's lots of mud down there and no shortage of tripping hazards. Oh, and fast-moving fire. Let's not forget that.

My father is easily winded these days due to lung issues that have official names.

Also, everyone in my family has a well-documented history of falling for no good reason.

Needless to say, between the fire itself and my (potentially) winded father so close to it all, the tension (much like the temperature) was rising--in direct correlation to my already frazzled blood pressure.

Several times he ventured out of my line of sight and I thought for sure he'd fallen; in that fast-moving fire there was no room for error.

(Have I mentioned our well-documented family history of falling even when we're not walking in creek mud, marsh grass, brambles, and uneven terrain? With a fire lapping at our heels?)

Dearest Hallieford Neighbors,  I'm sorry.  First you get a daily dousing of smoke from his wood-burning furnace.  Now this.  

Warning: The tractor above moves much slower than it appears--in the exact opposite direction of the raging inferno when said inferno was spreading higher into the pine tree zone. He was as cool as a cucumber, not a worry in the world.

I, on the other hand, was as cool as a habanero pepper slathered liberally with wasabi sauce. This was where I officially started to panic. If the pine trees caught on fire that would definitely not be part of the controlled burn plan, if such a plan existed.  Ordinarily there would be pictures of the flames reaching farther up the pine trees, but by that time I had tossed the camera aside in search of the fire department a rake to attempt to control the uncontrolled, controlled fire.
It was futile.
So I had a glass of wine instead.

The burning away of some of the marsh grass revealed a site where glass was once dumped. That's what they did back in the day before they lit their shorelines on fire for entertainment.  They slammed their excess glassware into the ground.  Not really. But they did dump the glass in certain designated spots such as this.

I can't wait to investigate this area. But at the time this was taken the ground was chock full of embers. And my eyebrows were already singed as it was. No need to pile on.

When the fire started to wane around the pine trees, I could finally relax.  




But wait.  Not yet.




Then my father returned to set fire to the section of shoreline closest to the dock, which also appeared to be perfectly combustible.

He's down in the mud again. See how high that fire is reaching?

Hello?It's over his head. And he's ankle deep in creek mud!
More wine please.

All in all, it was a successful controlled burn even if it appeared absolutely uncontrolled for a good portion of the event.  


We do this every so often around here, and lest you think we're unusual, I can assure you we're not the only ones.  


Fire does encourage growth of good things.  The marsh grass and cattails come back in full force.  Wild asparagus too, much to my mother's glee.  


Even if the above is not true, we tell ourselves this each and every year to enjoy the privilege of a good pyrotechnics display fire.

Fire Marshal Twinkie, on his way to find another home. As he left he was overheard mumbling, "The humans here are animals. Absolute savages."

If any of you out there can contribute to the reasons why one should burn a shoreline, please leave a comment.  And a glass of wine.

Click here for last year's rendition of the same activity.


Last but not least, I'm so very grateful to have a father next door who takes care of the things I would could never do myself.  He does everything very well in spite of all my worrying and fretting, and I love him very much. (Love you too, CB Mother! Can't wait to eat the asparagus.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

p.s. Pardon the shift from third to first person about halfway through this post.  It's a coping mechanism brought on by stress due to a father, a house, and a dock  standing way too close to fast-moving flames.