We Do This Every Year

Every year we burn off the hill to the west of the house. Not much, really, compared to the burning we used to do. We used to burn off all our fields each Spring, but now they are mostly planted with little trees.
For quite a few years I dreaded "The Spring Burn" because one particular season we had several times when the burn almost got out of hand... Not only that, but the nutty people doing the burning (Dad and the kids) just don't know when they are done. They keep finding one more place they can burn. The year of the close calls, I had to go out with wet towels, fighting the backyard fire so many times (ok, so it was maybe three separate times within a week) that the fourth time, when hot ashes from the heatmor were dumped before they were totally cooled and ignited the brush near the paddies, I was sorely tempted to sit in the back of the house and pretend I didn't notice they needed help. That is how sick I was of it. You cannot believe the high stress of smacking a fire with a wet towel, while it is trying hard to run away from you, all the while you are imagining what it is going to be like when you burn down half the county and all your neighbors know you did it and for years to come talk about your stupidity... sigh...
One year my brother and his wife had a bonfire get out of control and actually had the fire department come. A lot of the swamp behind their house burned. It was such a dry spring... a couple of weeks later we heard on the news that a wildlife sanctuary near Tom's place had a wildfire that was burning several hundred acres. The kids were mortified and asked, "Oh no! Did Tom and Sharlene burn that down, too?"