We’d run out of wood for Operation Endless Sapsucking, but undeterred, he dug from beneath the snow a pile of logs we’d chopped but not split last year. We split them up and resumed work, or tried to. We had a problem: the soaked, unseasoned stuff wasn’t throwing enough heat to melt snow, much less tend to the needs of Its Highness The Sap.
Our cookstove has a small oven in the center, and we’d started drying the wood in there before transferring it to the fuelbox. This worked brilliantly: the fire would spark right up, burn hot, and we’d spend the day perched up with a book, playing three-card monte with the wood. Things were working out.
Then we went to bed, forgetting to empty out the oven’s drying racks. The plan was to let the contents of the stovetop boil down, let everything go out, and resume in the morning. Instead, I awoke at five a.m. to the welcoming sight of our cookstove alight. The drying wood had itself sparked up, and burnt overnight. It didn’t do any damage to the stove, which is now covered in a well-earned black patina of soot and hard work.
In garden-related news, the other day, the cat puked all over a pot of ungerminated tomato seeds. I thought they were done for; I’d saved them from last year and put them out almost a month ago, and I assumed they didn’t keep well (I’m a little ghetto in my seed-saving practices, unsurprisingly). I left the puke, for two reasons: 1> I didn’t want to disturb the seeds, just in case. And 2> because the thought of cleaning cat puke out of a starter pot is just ridiculous; best to be lazy and leave it alone and dump the whole thing out in another few weeks when nothing has happened.
Do you know what, my dear readers? They germinated! I don’t know if there’s room in the crowded market for Cat Barf Fertilizer, but if your seeds aren’t coming up, let me know.
I *knew* there had to be a use for cat puke. After all, there’s so much of it…