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CREAM OF CHERRY

Driving down to the village this morning, as I passed the slash pile where I find my free firewood treasures I saw that someone had dumped several truckloads of trimmings that looked fantastic, and I resolved to stop there on my way back up. When I got out of the van to check on the pile, I found that it contained straight half-meter logs of logs of cherry, ironwood and oak up to 30 cm in diameter. The firewood scavenger's dream. I couldn't keep from jumping up and down, or from tossing the logs and thick limbs into the van even though it hadn't been emptied; I couldn't stop finding logs much too good to just leave there. So I limited my take to stuff I wouldn't have to use a chainsaw on (when the sky's the limit, you've got to draw the line somewhere). When I had taken all the firewood creme de la creme the van could way beyond reasonably carry, I inched on up to the house and added it all to the pile. Then for lunch I had the rest of yesterday's veg soup, but added a soupcon of soymilk, a soupcon of roma tomato paste and stirred, then took the soup off the flames and stirred in a very big tablespoon of the pesto I made this summer. Talk about feeding a firewood appetite...