Mommy Blog

The Burn Pile

in Giggles on September 5, 2022

This map shows the drought conditions for the entire state of Texas during the last couple of weeks of August, 2022.

Everybody knows that summertime in Texas is about as close to Hell’s Front Porch as anyone wants to get. But, this summer was one of the worst on the record books for at least the last decade.

I live in Houston, and usually, we rival Seattle in annual rainfall. While far West Texas almost always looks like something out of a John Steinbeck novel, Houston—in most years—still looks like a Bob Ross painting…complete with happy trees and friendly streams.

Not this year.

Many of you know that my husband and I recently moved. We are well outside the city, and live on a small acreage homestead. Out here in the sticks, folks have water wells on their properties. Praise be to God and all of His wisdom-inspiring angels for blessing Jeff with the idea to drill our well more than 100 feet beyond the acceptable well depth. Many of our neighbors were not so blessed, and as a result, their wells have run out of water.

I honestly didn’t know that was a thing.

Because we are in a new construction home…on acreage…there were some indigenous items accumulating around the house and property. Items that were too big to throw away and/or too cumbersome for the back of Jeff’s truck. So, we did what most country folk do…

We started a burn pile…

In the middle of the WORST drought in a decade.

Now, before anyone jumps to conclusions, we didn’t actually light it. We might be new to the Green Acres gig, but we did know enough to understand if we were to set a small(ish) fire in the middle of a tinderbox, we would probably burn down our brand new house—and most of the neighborhood. So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

We waited three months for rain. In all of our waiting, my precious Texas was scorched to the soil. Everyone I know was praying for rain, begging for rain, borrowing songs and dance moves from Betty White (from the movie, The Proposal); all to no avail. Even knowing the wrathful force that Mother Nature can devastate a coastline with…we would have even been thankful for a hurricane.

But, nothing came.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the sun was hidden behind a monster cloud, and the rains came. And came. And came.

Grass that was brown, crispy and well overcooked, turned green in a matter of hours. Trees sprouted new leaves—GREEN leaves. Ponds, lakes, and underground aquifers began to fill.

This is what Texas looks like now. She is still incredibly thirsty, but, in our neck of the woods, the burn ban was lifted. Which meant that my sweet husband could get his redneck on, so to speak, and play with fire.

My ever-growing stash of burnable objects has been steadily growing over the last three months. We lost some trees, due to the drought, which ended up chopped and thrown in. We’ve had random fence boards that were either broken or warped, naturally those made it to the heap. There were plenty of other miscellaneous contributions that added to the girth of our mini mountain. In short, Jeff was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning when he made the decision that it was Go Time!

There was only a slight hiccup in the plan; the burn pile was wet.

Very wet.

Wet, by definition, does not burn easily. He found this out. As I sat in my office this past Friday morning, looking out my picture window, I noticed my sweet husband—striding over to the burn pile with rock wrapped up in a rag swinging by his side. I then watched, with extreme concern, him light the rag and sling it toward the jumble of junk in my backyard.

Nothing happened.

He stood there for a heartbeat, turned, and walked (muttering) back to the garage for more ammo.

Five minutes later, back he came…with another rag-wrapped rock.

Round two.

Again, nothing happened.

Back he went, and back he came.

Before the fifth rock was tossed, he decided on a different plan. A more aggressive plan.

I watched in horror, as he doused the mountain with gasoline. He then lit his rag, wound up like a Major League pitcher, and launched his final assault on our hoard.

WHOOSH!!!

HOUSTON, WE HAVE LIFT-OFF.

The five construction workers who were busily attending to the concrete forms that will make up the walls of our well house, a mere 100 feet from the point of ignition, collectively jumped six feet in the air. They all spun around so fast to see what had just exploded that they looked like cartoons. However, within seconds of realization dawning on them, their fear was replaced with their own childlike curiosity and admiration for fire, and they, too, wandered over to check out the flames.

The abject and absolute fascination with fire must be a Y-chromosome thing.

Here we are, starting Day 4 of the Burn, and I am pleased to announce that nobody has been hurt, my house has not (yet) burned down, and my neighborhood is still in tact. There are, however, two notably large tree stumps that refuse to give in to the inferno. Those are still smoldering. But, all in all, my once twelve-foot across, and eight-foot high eyesore has effectively been reduced by at least 75%.

Of course, now my dear husband is trying to figure out what to do with the last two remaining tree stumps. I think we’ll get the boys together, and let them drag the two hold-outs to the pond, and push them into the middle so the fishies have something to play hide-and-go-seek in. The pond adventures will be a later post.

For today, though, I will sit here and watch the remains of the fire fizzle to a stop, and smile over the transformation my husband has made from City Dweller to Country Boy, and simply wait for the next episode of my very own Green Acres.

Until next time…be safe out there.