When its going good and red hot, its just a matter of keeping some fresh logs in there every hour or two. I let it go through the night, and often it is red hot enough in the morning to start w/0 matches.

I feel so mountain man, me in a cabin with my interent.

As a result, pictures of piles of kindling resonate very deeply with me. :-) My husband, who is a much more gifted firestarter than me, thinks I’m crazy to be as nuts as I am about kindling, but I can’t help it.

I’m not as virtuous as you, however. Last year, I broke down and asked for a bag of fatwood for Christmas. Erik was mortified that we were actually using store-bought kindling. The good news is that I’m getting better — I can now usually start a good roaring fire with a single piece of fatwood wrapped in a sheet of newspaper. But you’re making me think I need to spend some portion of this summer being diligent about collecting our own kindling from our property. There certainly is plenty to be found if I set my mind to it.

I could handle water in our garage but the neighbours were trying to sell their home and each time it rained they would get some water in their garage. A new stormwater drain with a pit would solve both problems so the tree had to come down. It was actually a little dangerous as well.

We get some runoff from our other neighbours property further up the hill and I am hoping that they will collaborate on a similar stormwater set up on our shared boundary.

A two person meme is sufficient. ^_^

Next time you are downunder Alan you can join us on an ‘adventure’. You can use your existing pseudonym and become a ‘member’ of ‘The Adventurers’ Club’. The ‘club’ has been a little quiet since December as one of our fellow founding members, ‘Diamond’, busted his knee on the last day of term.

The ‘club’ has turned out to be a neat pastoral or collegial entity for staff at our school. Not unlike your tree recycling episode our minds are taken off the day to day stuff and we get to enjoy an environment only minutes from our doorstep. You can read some of our adventure stories here if you like.

http://adventurers.larkin.net.au/index.html

None of the stories mention technology.

Take care, John

BTW, we have a fair number of imported eucalyptus trees growing here in Arizona.

Yes, nice “branch”, cheer from across the water.

In order to have some drainage works completed at our home an old eucalyptus tree had to come down. It was a reluctant decision actually, but our ground floor and our neighbour’s ground floor no longer get flooded now. My wife Shao Ping blogged about it here with some photographs.

http://lcsl.blogspot.com/2007/07/possum.html

As Shao Ping’s post indicates the tree was a haunt for possums. Here are a few photographs of these occasional visitors.

http://www.larkin.net.au/possum/index.html

The tree was massive and require special permission for its removal. We had to plant some more native trees elsewhere to make up for its loss.

Anyway, the tree came down and the branches were turned into small wood chips to use as mulch on our garden. The neighbours took some as well.The trunk was given to a local woodturner. I kept one cross section of the trunk to take to school so that I could use it to demonstrate dendrochronology to my year eleven ancient history class ~ the art of tree ring dating.

Enjoyed reading your post. It’s good to branch out now and then, eh?

Cheers,
John Larkin, NSW, Australia.