The air is still blue with the smell of melted chemicals. It is not visually blue ... just olfactorally blue. No. It is not really blue at all. It is an ugly colour smell so blue is wrong. It is acidic yellow green, I think. No ... it's greasy greenish black.
It reminds me of the times back in the early seventies when we lived in an old school house in the Ottawa Valley and my husband regularly burned the garbage.
The kids (our own and those of the neighbours) would roast weiners over a fire redolent with the smell of burning plastic. Just thinking about what they ingested gives me the willies now.
Looking back on that time, I realize we likely were regarded in that very conservative community as some kind of Dogpatch family of unkempt hippies. I didn't attend church. I supported Dr. Morgentaler. I gave a tea party for the local NDP candidate. I wore jeans and had hair falling to my waist. And we were the people who lived in that dirty old school house, you know.
But I digress. Here at the hermitage, so far this morning, I have hauled a couple of bags of garbage I collected yesterday up the hill. After breakfast I will do some more raking down there, and bag and transport more .
I also have to pull up some of the stinging nettle. When four of us were wrestling the old washing machine up the hill, Tom was stung. I will try to get all of it this time. It is a nasty weed.
Then I will see what needs to be done with the fire area. There is a twisted metal sofa frame in it. Likely too big for me to move alone, but I need to get rid of that black ash or I will have dogs with black feet decorating my slate floors all day.
And there will be four, possibly five, dogs here today! That is a lot of greasy black puppy paw prints.
When everyone arrives this afternoon, I will ask Carlos to put the clothesline up ... again. It takes two people, at least one taller than I am, to attach it. I am not sure what the guys were carrying that was big enough to snag the clothesline yesterday, but after they left I discovered my laundry lying in the dirt, and the chicken wire fencing festooned with underwear. Fortunately everything was dry when the line collapsed.
On this glorious sunshine-filled day, I am looking forward to a morning of outdoor chores plus preparing for company and an afternoon and evening with friends. We are going to have ribs, chicken, and sausage. Tammy is bringing salads, and Marta dessert. It will be a great picnic, even if we have to eat indoors to avoid the stench and the black flies!
At least today I won't be cooking the meat over a garbage dump fire.
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I have fond childhood memories of those fires!
Its funny when we go looking for our dream property (under 150 000 with a big enough acerage to support a good sized subsistance garden and a pen for a couple of goats, sheep and a pony and a chicken coop) we look for the signs of dogpatch living...here its piles of tires, rusting trucks for "scrap" and unkempt weedy lawns/sandpits. A well hung laundryline always saves a house from us starting to sing the hillbilly song...as do alpacas...someone can live in a rusty trailer surrounded by weeds and have exotic pets and we'll forgive them anything!
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