which_chick | (no subject) (Reply)

When I take the ashes and coals out of the woodstove so that I have room in the stove to build a new fire, I schlep them outside and dump them on the compost heap. This has set the compost heap on fire a couple of times, but since I live way out in the country and don't really have neighbors, that's okay. Also, the compost heap doesn't catch on fire easily these days because it's all already been burnt. Anyway, if it's night out when I tip the ashes and coals out of my nifty metal bucket that I got for Christmas, the coals glow orangey-red, like things that are hot enough to emit visible spectra of radiant heat, about the color of an electric stove burner on high. Hrm. As a simile, that could use some work. It's not exactly tripping off the tongue, is it? But if I said they were like rubies, that'd suck -- hot coals are not like rubies. They're nowhere near ruddy enough. They are the orange-red of mediumly-hot things, about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. (Here's a handy chart.) This is probably because they ARE hot things. D'oh. If you've not seen scattered hot coals glowing angrily in the dark cold, well, your loss... they're quite pretty. I should try to take a picture for you. I wonder how that'd come out?

For now, though, if you're resorting to your sterling imagination to render this bucolic image of my life that I've just shared, imagine an orangey-red and not a red-like-rubies. Red-like-rubies is way wrong.