Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

  Put that in your pipe and smoke it! That would be the attitude of the officials if I had nerve to complain but since I don't, I just have to live with it.  "It" being smoke and all of the grime that goes with it.  Up north of here, the forestry folks are in the midst of doing their "controlled burns".  Large spans of grassy fields and even some wooded areas are burned in the name of controlling future fires.  I can see the sense in that...I suppose...but it still does not help matters here nor does it help the thousands of critters that are rousted out of their snug homes in the midst of winter. No one thinks about the rabbits, fox, mice, bobcats and other critters that make nice snug dens.  Yep, they are all out of a place to live now that the land has been scorched.  Out of a home, if they survived at all.

   Still, that is not my gripe for the day even though my complaint seems petty compared to what the animals must be feeling at the moment. It seems that every time there is one of these burns, we happen to have a north wind.  This makes all that nice smoke and ash float down my way. I was out minding my own business, in my own garden when I was literally coated with ashes drifting down from the sky. Ashes in my hair. Ashes on my clothes.  Ashes on my freshly washed laundry on the clothesline. Nice. (And, yes, I am being sarcastic there..it was far from nice.)  To make matters worse, this ash was falling on things that were still wet from a heavy fog this morning and on my wet towels.  Nice.  (See, above...sarcasm is a grand thing.) 

  The only good thing that I found in today's smokiness was an interesting sun.  Mid afternoon saw the sun being shrouded by the smoke.  It was thick enough to create an almost surreal atmosphere. Where the day should have been bright, it was darkened with a reddish brown haze.  Although this was rather interesting, I do hope this is the last of the controlled burns for this season.