Daughter Kate was able to come a third time this year, and she drove down the day before her birthday. It’s a brutal drive to do in one day. After a good night’s sleep, she was ready to celebrate. I prepared salmon and a baked potato for our main meal.

We talked non-stop but paused to have cake that evening. If you look closely, you might be able to see that it was only half a cake, sold that way in the supermarket. It was perfect for us, lasting three days.

The next day was devoted to burning leaves. The lawn people had blown all the leaves onto the burn pile, and it was much too large to be left that way. Kate was all for burning the whole pile, but I was afraid it would take too long and hurt the lawn.

Kate did it my way, using the burn barrel. We were out there from 10 in the morning until after 4 in the afternoon. Kate got a really hot fire going and burned about a third of the pile. I’ll admit I was wrong. It probably would not have taken as long to do all the leaves at the same time. About half way through, I went inside to make us a picnic lunch, since we wouldn’t leave the fire unattended.

A final photo shows Kate still smiling. She had burned about a third of the leaves.