Dust to Dust

Sharing our firewood with the hickory borer beetles
Sharing our firewood with the hickory borer beetles

Might be you won’t even notice. But if you find you can’t comment for a while tomorrow, or can’t access Fragments (in which case this message is a waste of time) or find I haven’t updated for a day or so, pardon our dust.

I’m being relocated to more spacious digs–or at least a new server. Things will be back to abnormal soon enough.

Meanwhile, I only wish I could charge the darn beetles their fair share of the money I paid for this firewood, seeing as how we’ll not get very much heat from the holes they’ve made in our solid hardwood winter fuel.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. You gave me a momentary scare with the title of today’s post, Fred, given the context that “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is usually recited. I’m glad it’s “just” remodeling/wood-borer dust you’re talking about.

  2. And technically, no ashes were involved, only hickories. So sorry for the scare–even though mortality has been very much at issue in our family of late with little Henry’s struggles to make it through his first week of life. That which does not break us…

  3. Ditto with the others’ scared thoughts! Sad your wood stash was ‘mangled’ but glad it is ultimately replaceable! It’s rather weird though, we removed a lamer than lame interior door in our house the other day because our dachshund went nuts on it (think hollow cheap contractor door that came with the house) and I thought, I wonder if this would be something Fred F. would want for kindling!?! Lol. It’s no hardwood, but your fire maintenance was certainly in my thoughts. My mind wanders like that at times…..