Fireplaces and wood stoves simply are not as common as they were only a few decades ago. Because of modern building codes, most that get damaged by earthquakes get removed or replaced by pellet stoves. The orchards that once provided so much inexpensive firewood while they were being cleared for urban development are now gone. The wood yards in the relatively arboraceous outskirts of town are farther away. Many municipalities have established ordinances to limit smoke, although this is not a problem if well seasoned wood gets burned properly, and only means that fireplaces can not be used on ‘spare the air’ days.
Firewood can be purchased from tree services that need to dispose of wood anyway. Because it is only a byproduct of tree work, it will likely need to be stored and seasoned the year before it is needed, just like orchard wood. (Firewood from wood yards gets seasoned before it gets sold.) Some types of wood that are often mixed in leave a bit more residue in chimneys, necessitating more frequent chimney sweeping. Realistically though, chimneys should be cleaned regularly anyway.
Because firewood is perishable, it should be obtained annually, in quantities that will be used in a single winter. It can rot if stored outside too long. If stored in a shed or garage too long, it can get infested with rodents. Besides, too much firewood occupies quite a bit of space.
Synthetic logs (made from compressed wood byproducts and fuel) are an effective, clean and efficient alternative to real wood that do not need to be seasoned. Each log burns about as long as several real logs, and produces about as much heat, so only a few go a long way. They are always available from supermarkets, and can be brought home with the groceries. Pellet stoves that consume fuel pellets that look like stove food are even more efficient. However, there is no substitute for a fire with real wood in a real fireplace or wood stove.
Little kids were allowed to walk to school back in the early 1970s. The youngest had to walk with older siblings or neighbors who made them look both ways and hold hands to cross the streets, and stay back from the roadway. Once through the open gate into the schoolyard, younger kids could leave their slightly older chaperones to meet up with their friends and eventually go to their respective classrooms.
The “Poly” in Cal Poly is for “Polytechnic”, as in there are multiple schools within “California Polytechnic State University” at San Luis Obispo. There were seven school when I was there between 1985 and 1990. I was a student of the “School of Agriculture”. “Horticulture” was my “Major”, or major realm of study within this school. Within this major, I selected “Floriculture and Nursery Production” as my “Concentration” of study. That certainly is a lot of quotation marks.
Like something from an old fashioned science fiction movie, this anomaly appeared in a roadway overnight. There are several more in other roadways and elsewhere about town. They are quite wet. In fact, they are composed almost completely of water. What is even weirder is that the water that they are composed of actually fell mysteriously from the sky overnight as many countless droplets all over town! Many of these droplets migrated into low spots such as this one to form what we now see in this picture.
I do not know where they went. There are plenty that are not worth getting pictures of, but the pretty and colorful ones that I wanted to show off in the ‘Six on Saturday’ post are gone. I suppose that they are still out there. They just are not as pretty and colorful as they were earlier.
