After a day of heavy rain yesterday, we were back at the burn. I didn’t take too many photos today because around midmorning, one of the hydraulic lines on the yumbo sprung a leak. We spent a couple of hours feeding the fire manually while we waited for a repair. Fortunately for us, Komatsu had a repair truck not too far away and we had the yumbo going again by lunchtime.
Charred beams are heavy and fire is hot. Those points were driven home as I heaved wood into the incinerator. I think all of us reached peak gratitude for Fujii-san and his equipment today. Without it, clearing the site have been an impossibly difficult task.
Kawasaki-san made two trips to the dump today – one with a dozen bags of broken ceramics and glass and the second with 20 crates of singed books from this father’s library. There are more books, but they will go tomorrow or next week. I had looked through the shelves a few weeks back and there were many books on gardening and tons of other useful reference books. A decent collection of manga, too.
I took several short breaks throughout the day to do things with plants. The ashitaba is already regrowing in the front garden. It’s a tasty edible weed, really, and seeing it spring back up has a real feeling of hope. I trimmed the singed rose bush and pussy willow at the corner of the barn because it was too depressing to see them all brown and withered. They will regrow and it will be fine.
I also picked my first crop of tea! I will process it and drink the results before too long. I learned a lot about tea today and I will share that with you someday. I am too tired now, but tea is a lot more interesting that I thought.
By the end of the afternoon, as we settled the lid on the incinerator, we still had some big piles of timbers remaining, so we will reconvene tomorrow to burn again. I think one more day will do it.
It’s very muddy after yesterday’s rain. The yumbo carefully covered its tracks at the end of the work day. The driver is polite and careful and very skilled with the machine. I’m glad he’s on the “Monaca International Rescue Team.”
