First fire

[greenstorm]

Cleaned the chimney, started the woodstove last night. Ooof.

The house feels so much nicer though. And there's something about wood heat, it makes the house feel quieter. Stepping out from the warm house into the woodsmoke-smelling cool air outside, though: it's definitely fall.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

september first! whew. it's still hot out here. tho i did have to sleep with actual pajamas on this week, as the weather has finally (FINALLY) broken a little bit, and it rained.

wood heat is the absolute best. the smells of it, the way it feels to build a fire, the feel of that particular heat, all of it.

[greenstorm]

We're finally getting our heat, having dodged that frost. So strange.

I hope more rain has found you since then.

[yarrowkat]

some has! we got another half inch of rain out of that weird freak cold front that came through last week. and the cold front also broke the heat, FINALLY. they were telling us it might freeze here (unprecedentedly early), but it didn't. the wind knocked over some sunflowers, but that's alright. it did get very cold for three days, daytime high barely 4 degrees over the nighttime low on that middle day, and windy and spitting rain the whole time, and once it blew out, we're left with honestly ordinary fall weather! which is SUCH a relief!

of course, now we're breathing smoke (from Arizona, mostly, but some probably is blowing all the way from southern California). we don't have it nearly as bad as everybody west of us, though. yesterday the line of the advancing front of smoke was visible in the sky above town: south, smoke; north, blue sky.

[greenstorm]

We had a cold couple days, but lucky for us the smoke went by very high up. It was just frost and red sun.

Very glad you didn't have a freeze. We must have sent our ceaseless rain to you finally.

[yarrowkat]

the red sun in and of itself can be pretty spooky; the grey sky is harder; the lowering orange sky really makes a body feel like the world is about to end right this minute. it's downright primordial, some kind of brainstem response. i am deeply grateful not to be on the coast this year, and really feel for the people who are living in that visible apocalypse day after day.

[greenstorm]

So grateful not to be there!

Evacuating during it previously was at least something to *do*