MY PATIO: THE CHIMENEA

To begin with, it must be said:  As a general rule,  I don't like new things.  I like old things...found things....repurposed things.  They are things which can tell a story to anyone who is still long enough to listen.

The story about my patio must begin with the chimenea.  And it is one of the few things I bought 'new.'  It is the heart and soul of this, for me, sacred, special haven.

It was a holiday, as I recall and my husband and I decided we wanted to take a day trip.  We wandered, probably on back roads and wound up in Nogales, Arizona.  There, we saw a business, open, with a  huge yard chock full of every kind of Mexican pottery imaginable!  At the time, I had been painting on regular clay pots but what I saw there put an end to 'regular clay pot painting!  We wound up spending a crazy amount of money on a crazy amount of merchandise....including this chimenea  The owner was so pleased.  He told us that he had almost not opened that day, expecting little or no business but he had a goal he was trying to reach and our purchases put him over his goal.  It was a good day for us all!  How did all that stuff get to our house?  I don't remember but it was so much, it had to have been delivered.

This is some of the stuff I used to paint on...including pots of all kinds and small chimeneas purchased that day!

How many untold hours have been spent with so many special people, talking and laughing or just sitting in sweet, companionable silence, watching the flames dance and listening to the crackling of burning wood ....and smelling that sweetest perfume of all, cedar and pinon pine as the smoke curls up and around us.....warming our hands....and our feet....and our hearts.....with its' sacred fire.  I say it is sacred because the wood gives up its very last shred of life,  to keep us warm.  That is a gift!

Eventually, with minimal help from my husband because I WANT TO DO IT BY MYSELF!!!!.....I built a stand for it,  from a neighbor's discarded flagstone.  Thank you, Cecil.   May he RIP.  Now, there's a 'hearth' .....a  place to prop your feet up to get them all toasty on a cold evening.

This was many years ago.  I am...and look...much older now!

And, I did, finally throw those shorts away. 

 I placed in it, stones I had found in my wanderings through the desert creeks and canyons and flatlands....each with its own, special memory.  It is not exactly level.  I do not care.  And, I purposely left sufficient spaces to  provide lizards easy access in and out of this good dwelling place for them.

One time, a 2 year old child was visiting and I had given him the hose to play at watering the plants in my pots.  He watered everything.  And when, his mom and I got distracted, he filled the chimenea to overflowing!  I didn't think to take out all the wet sand and ash.....so it could properly dry....and so it began deteriorating more quickly than it might have.   A crack appeared....from what, I don't know...perhaps a fire that was too hot made from mesquite wood?  Still, after 20 plus years, it stands there.....waiting.....till it can again warm my heart and the hearts of all who sit by its glow.