Two thousand five hundred thirty five pounds

That’s how much wood I have stacked with these two hands since last I posted. It’s also only about one-third of what I will burn this winter, so I get the chance to do it two more times!

While I was doing it, it occurred to me that every single stick I carried from the piazzetta to the garage and carefully stacked would later have to be carried into the house for burning. There were a couple of moments when I wondered if it wouldn’t be clever to pitch a tent next to the woodpile and just live there. I could grill sausages and vegetable chunks on a stick. The encouraging “Buon lavoro” from each neighbor who passed reminded me that they’d be calling the men in the white coats if I didn’t do it their way. I’d be taken to the hospital where I would surely catch the swine flu.

The pictures are of things I have cooked and will be writing about. They will disappear, one by one, as they come up.

So I stacked it. And now I carry it in, 20 pounds or so at a time, and burn it. Life is lived within an area of heat radiation with exceptions made for the oven now and again. Wood fires make dust, smoke escapes when you work on the fire, they need constant attention, and you have to clean all that up. Every morning the fire has gone out and I must shovel out the ashes, wash the glass in the doors, and then use chips and bark bits and the oldest wood from two years ago to encourage yet a new fire.

It sounds like way too much trouble at times, but I try to remember that every single bit of this effort will pay off in calories used, whereas the gas fired central heating wouldn’t help a bit.

Gianna is the first of my friends to come down with swine flue, here called Influenza A. I saw her on Halloween, which I think is before she could have had the virus. It’s a terrible thing to think about whether your friends are catching or not.