Ashes, Ashes...

We tried going without a fire for a few days, but the return of cold, grey, drizzly weather forced us to get the wood stove fired up again.  First we needed to clean out some ashes (for those sensitive to messes, don't look)...

He actually did a pretty good job.  The big mess came later, when he and Shane were filling the wood box from outside.  A heavy piece of madrona from this adventure hit the divider of the pass-through, which fell over and hit the ash bucket, which had no lid and went flying sideways...

...we had a great visual/kinesthetic lesson on how volcanic ash could block out the sun...