after the fire

in our indian garden we have 40 mature coconut trees. not all are producing coconuts but they all occasionally lose a frond. if we leave the fronds on the ground soon the termites will feed on them. to avoid assisting the termites in ruining our garden we have been burning the the fronds along with cashew leaves in the same spot in the back for some years now. over time the ashes have built up into a considerable heap and while we do use some ash as fertilizer in the garden, each year the heap grows.

the thick hard woody parts of the fronds retain moisture far longer than the thin leafy parts so the brown leafy parts burn very hot but only for a short time

the woody stems remain charred but largely unburnt

each time we fire new fronds the old ones dry and burn more until they eventually become a fine powdered brownish-gray
ash

yesterday morning when i dragged a few that had fallen in the night to the site, the arrangement of the remains struck me as being oddly photogenic

so i went to the house grabbed my S22 and took these shots

at the edge of the fire there are often some unburnt leafy remains

some coconut shells had escaped the recent flames so i threw them back on the heap. they fell where they fell. so while this last photo was not exactly arranged nor was it how i originally found the shells in the ashes.