the slag has been burned

Just finished up burning up my seven foot tall slag pile. Most of it was brush and branches from the lot clearing that the previous owner had started on. When I first got to town three weeks ago I decided to pile it all up and burn it up rather than having to pay for a dump load of greens. The first several weeks of being in town it has been far too dry to safely burn that big of a pile so I decided to wait for a few days of rain. Turned out to be a good call as this pile would have been a pretty big fire had it not been nice and wet!
I was going to take a few pictures of it while it was burning in the beginning but it turned out that tending it was all I could do. Garden hose in hand I kept the pile from fully errupting and tended a very hot spot to pull everything else over to. About four hours later I was left with what you see here… though by the time I had it down to this level I had already had a visit from the fire department! whoops, should have warned them I guess. They didn’t come rushing over and didn’t actually seem all that concerned when they arrived as they chatted with my neighbor for 10 minutes before they came over to talk with me. The conversation was cordual and ended with a friendly suggestion that next time I might come down and get a burn permit from them. Who knew! Well, not the 10 or so people that I talked to about doing the burn over the past couple of weeks. I guess talking with the local authorities might be a wise idea rather than asking random friends!

It really helps having that pile out of the way as I am beginning to be able to see better what I might like to do with the various designs have developed over the past six months. I will be sitting down with a number of my favorites to see if additional ideas come into view. My hope is to have at least a good enough idea of a general foot print for the house so that I can scratch out a building pad and more of a driveway later this month. Then once I have the plans okayed by the city building planners, I should be able to go forward with the foundation! I can almost picture the framing going up now! Yeah!