Firepits don't have to be big holes in the ground anymore, with Flintstone-style seating all around. So many styles of outdoor fireboxes are being manufactured. I once considered digging a firepit in my back yard to line with field stones. For campfire seats, I thought I'd use crosscuts 2 feet high from a maple tree I had to pay a certified arborist to remove. But I figured dead wood might eventually draw termites, so the rustic maple "seats" are gone.
People who can find a safe spot with no overhanging tree branches are grouping outdoor furniture around freestanding fireplaces, such as the copper-trimmed model above, available at Home Depot or at homedepot.com, model 98380, for $234. It's a good design with its vented copper top and apron.
If you think candlelight is mesmerizing, picture a patio on a cool evening with a contained, crackling fire in the center of a chatty group of comfortably seated friends. All eyes will be riveted on the fire's glow because owners of new houses have only remote- controlled gas fireplaces. A real, live fire is quite the novelty now -- indoors or outdoors.
The last time I built a summertime fire on the ground, it was at least 90 humid degrees on the lakeshore, but I wanted to demonstrate to some youngsters that "real" toasted marshmallows require an open fire. They had been fed only microwave-melted s'mores. One mother told me she hadn't stopped to realize that her 6-year-old son had never experienced an authentic toasting adventure. When your parents own a convenient gas grill as big as a Ford Mustang, they don't bother very often to stack firewood on the ground for an old- fashioned wiener roast, followed by marshmallows. Kindling and toasting forks are not at hand, as a rule.
The latter are carried by stores with camping supplies. I bought some before I inherited the toasting forks made by my Grandpa John. The commercial ones have uniform wire-oval handles; no two hand- bent handles of my grandfather's toasting forks are alike.
As a pre-Father's Day salute, I remain grateful that my dad took the time every other summer Sunday or so, when I was a third- and fourth-grader, to have a backyard wiener roast to go with our garden vegetables, followed by the marshmallow-toasting ritual. My collie loved begging at these picnics.
By early Sunday evening, the homemade ice cream would be ready; my mother would come with a tray and huge metal spoon in order to remove the paddle from the canister inside the wooden White Mountain tub, the hand-crank style. Earlier in the day, I'd accompanied my dad to the drive-through icehouse in my small town. It was my job to hold the little paper sack of rock salt on the way home. It sounds so 19th century, but we did take an "auto" to town, honest, not a horse-and-buggy. I do recall that my grandmother never stopped referring to a car as a "machine," even the Buick Roadmaster, the last in a long line of my grandfather's "machines."
I remember all of these things whenever I pass the bunch of wire toasting forks hanging on a peg in the garage.
'Art in the Garden'
Stroll along the banks of the Ohio in the charming river town of Augusta, Ky., when the Augusta Art Guild presents its 7th annual "Art in the Garden" event from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 2. About 50 local and regional artists will exhibit along Riverside Drive, a street lined with 21 homes built between the 1790s and the 1890s. Two will be open for house tours. They are interspersed with wonderful gardens, some open for the art affair; plants and garden decorations will be for sale. No admission charge; more information at www.augustaartguild.com.
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