Lawn Fire

I have the tenancy to over exaggerate my personal abilities now and then. Last night was one of those times. My husband wasn't home and we have had this huge pile of dried out lilac trimmings just sitting in the driveway for a month now. Usually Corey (my husband) takes care of such things, but I thought, "how hard can making a fire be?"

Well, much harder than it looked. I squatted on the ground for a good half and hour trying to get it to start while the kids whined for my attention and begged for smores. Finally I got it started. It really got going so I decided to start piling on the dead leaves and branches. It was amazing to see them turn into tiny pieces of black ash so quickly. The flames grew quickly too and I noticed that I had put the portable fire pit too close to a low branch on our butternut tree. First the leaves turned dark green, and then began to curl a bit.

I should have realized at that point that I was putting too much on at once, even more importantly, I had not been wise in my placement of the fire pit. There was a circle of grass that was dry and yellow from the last time we made a fire, so instead of putting the pit somewhere away from the dry grass, I wanted to save the rest of my lawn from becoming a yard of yellow circles. So, I did the only logical thing and put the fire pit right on top of the driest grass in the yard- you can tell where this is going.

I only had so much time before I had to put the babes to bed so I wanted to get as much burned as possible. I just kept piling on, and not carefully at all. The fire was getting hotter so I was tossing the branches from a farther distance. The branches started landing on the fire so that leaves were draping down either side of the pit, but this had happened before with no consequence, so I didn't even think about it, until I noticed that the smoke was not only coming from the pit, but the grass underneath it too.

I sent my kids in side, where my six year old quickly found a plastic left over magic hat from his birthday party and started filling it up with water. I started taking trips from the house and back until the fire underneath the pit was out, but not before the yellow circle of grass was completely black. Now what am I going to do with a black circle in the middle of my yard?!?