As I lit my fireplace tonight, before a buddy came over for dinner, I started reflecting how strange it is, I am heating my house with my house. I am burning my house up, a bit at a time!

Check the recycling bin next to the fireplace.

Nick’s house recycling.

As I do projects most around the house (raising the roof, back deck replacement, front porch, etc) anything which involves wood, I just throw the old wood scraps on to my utility trailer. In the winter, I chop the fuel up with the cordless circular saw and burn it.

Although I am adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning the wood, studies have shown it is no more than what occurs by natural biodegradation. Sadly, my wood will not be layered, compressed for ions, and converted in to crude oil for someone else’s pleasure of consumption. Another possibly is it be franked for its natural gas by pumping unknown crap into the rock strata and polluting the environment some millenia in the future. Fracken for gas what a terrible idea for the environment.

NO, I will be a consumer of carbon and use the stored carbon NOW. If there is pollution to be had at some point in time, I want to the one who benefits!

What is funny for me is that EACH piece of wood I touch evokes a memory and tells a story! I flash back to where and when I ripped it off the house, reflect and give honor to this moment in time in which THIS scrap of wood delivers to me the last bit of utility and pleasure it has to offer.

A much nobler purpose then being eaten by microbes…..

This little jewel is from my the side soffit brick detail near the guest bedroom. Took it off when Tony and I were re-roofing the house last winter.

This piece from the front porch rafter. I added new rafters when I repitched the roof. Spent a some time using Autocad to design the porch soffits which saved me LOTS of time trying to figure it out.

This guy is some of the vertical siding on the front porch.

And finally, these very memorable and special boards…. the last of their kind….

These boards which removed during a back porch upgrade. A lot of holes drilled in them to be repurposed as worm composting box ventilation boards. Eventually, after an upgrading the worm box the boards were relegated to the trailer for winter. Now as the last two that exist were being recycled. It was delightful to watch the smoke, flame and light start to dance out of all the holes as this wood begins the ultimate recycling.

In its place another memory has been born….

Red Worm composting. Remembering the Worm Poop Guys selling Worm Tea and Worm Casting at the downtown Charleston Farmers market. Hum, thats, another crazy story for another point in time….