Speaking of exploding trees… *grin* For the past few days we’ve been smelling smoke on the wind. That’s not SO unusual as a lot of people around here use their fireplaces, but it was a bit strong. This morning, John tracked the smoke down to an intensely smoldering log up on the hill behind the barn. (A few weeks ago, tom had been visiting and had knocked down a few huge old dead branches near that very spot, although I don’t think it’s necessarily related, just interesting.)

There were actually two logs – one John managed to almost totally smother by shoveling dirt on top. The other one – well, after I got dressed, I met him out there. It was smoldering and smoking and flaming in spots – just by itself – must have spontaneously combusted. There was a bunch of ash where 2/3 of the rest of the log had apparently ALREADY burned up. None of the sage around it appears to have been affected even though it was within a few inches of the log itself.

So John and I shoveled dirt and poured about five gallons of water over and around the log and we seem to have put a dent in the heat content – it was still smoldering, but seems to be on its way out now. We’re both pretty sure it’s not any danger of starting a huge brush fire (after all, it’s obviously already been burning for more than three days, and we’ve had a lot of fog and generally moist air the last few days), but it’s still a little disconcerting to have that going so close to us – it’s less than 1/4 mile from our house. We’re going to leave our landlord and the rancher that owns the barn notes because we can’t get a hold of them by phone at the moment. Yesterday it was cows, today, fire. LOL. [throws hands in air and shrugs]