 |
| What?! Cats are trying to sleep here. |
 |
| A cat's castle is his castle. |
 |
| Mmn, warm toasty fire. |
 |
| On the coldest nights, even fluffy cats want to climb in bed with the people. |
 |
| The only thing happier than one cat napping is two cats napping. (Have you ever heard the sound of one cat napping? It sounds like purring. Interspersed with little cat snores.) |
 |
| Zzzzzz. |
 |
| We can sleep in any position. |
 |
| See? |
 |
| Asleep in front of the television...er, birdfeeder. |
 |
| Cookie takes a turn in front of the wood stove. |
- A splitting maul is indeed a better tool for splitting wood than an axe.
- It may be the case that one can split some kinds of wood with just the maul, but for the remnants of giant hardwood trees, wedges are still required.
- If one is a forty-something person who hasn't split wood recently, spending a couple of hours doing it will make one rather sore.
- As sore as one may be after splitting wood, I'm experiencing a strong suspicion it's going to be worse in the morning.
- Giant logs need to be split not once, not twice, but into about six pieces before they are small enough to fit in the stove. (The tree was approximately 24" in diameter.)
- For an allegedly flammable substance, wood fires can take some persistence to get burning.
- But giant logs burn for a gratifyingly long time once you manage to ignite them.
- It is much wiser to dwell on the pleasant warmth of the fire than the fact that you split only one of the giant log chunks in two hours and have several dozen more to go.
...Yeah, I'm still knitting that scarf. You knew that, right?
When I was a kid, the house we lived in had a kitchen that was an addition to the house, but it wasn't hooked up to the central heating in the rest of the place, so it had a woodstove. Every september or so, my Dad would order several cords of wood - I remember them getting dumped in the middle of the driveway - and the three of us (Dad, brother and I) would spend the next weekend splitting and stacking wood on the back porch. I loathed it - I was small and weak so I could only carry a couple of pieces at a time and for a kid that weekend was an ETERNITY! I would much rather have been inside with the cats... napping!
ReplyDeleteAfter we moved from NH to CA, I found a neighbor with a pile of carefully split, stacked wood, and wondered, what on earth do you think you need that for here? Never did figure it out.
ReplyDelete