8th September 2019 Total ignorance is bliss?

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Sunday 8th 48-62F, cloudy with a risk of rain later. As usual, the competing Danish weather services don't agree. When do they ever? A walk to the lanes in weak sunshine. I was much too warm despite having only reached 57F so far. The wildlife total for this morning was a large and very dead, brown rat on the road.

Oh, and I also risked the planet [via the butterfly effect] by directing a large black beetle towards the edge of the tarmac. It was marching cheerfully down the middle of the road before that. If every action produces new branches in the timeline I may have irrevocably changed the future.

We have new neighbours [again!] Possibly "townies" but who can tell apart from their idiotic behaviour?

Lopping off hedges, outside of the clipping season, with a chainsaw, at waist height? Sound familiar? Throwing the debris across the collective drive where access is required by all. Including the postman's and other delivery vans? Check. Starting a fire with the freshly cut, green branches, on their lawn under an overhanging veranda? Dugh? Say what? 😆

It was pure luck that the smoke drifted straight at our home only a few [illegal] yards away. <sniff-cough-splutter-cough!> There are hard and fast rules about all such behaviour. They are enshrined in the law to protect the greater good. Rather than to favour deep, private ignorance, laying waste to the entire countryside.

Garden fires have strict rules about distances to hedges and buildings. All depending largely on the size of the intended [or final?] conflagration.  The safe distances to thatched buildings are enshrined in the law to avoid hideous tragedy. There are still a lot of thatched buildings in rural Denmark.

Read my lips: Garden bonfires may only be lit between December and March to protect the growing crops and inevitable hay which follows the harvest.

The safe distances required, by law, are not remotely insignificant. 15 meters to any building, inflammable structure, agricultural field or living growth. This is only with the tiniest, outdoor fire.

30 meters is the rule for still conditions for any bonfire over a yard/meter wide. The distances double with any wind. 60 meters is nearly 200 feet in Olde Money! Are you feeling lucky, punk?

These distances strongly suggest that the council run recycling yards, where garden waste may be safely dumped, free of charge, 24x7, make excellent sense. The cost of the facility is included in the rates.[local taxes.] You paid, so why not use them? The garden waste dumping yards are extremely popular, year round. Most rural Danes own a trailer and know their way to the recycling yard. Usually while driving with their eyes closed. This avoids them seeing the debris trail of hedge clippings which leads all the way back home. Real Danes don't use trailer nets! 👱

Hedge heights are also enshrined in the law to avoid neighbourly conflicts. Shared, boundary hedges are limited to 1.8 meters minimum height where disagreement exists. They may be up to 3.5 meters high with shared agreement. Or 5 meters where the hedge shares a field boundary. Hedges are usually clipped only in high summer. This avoids die-back in sensitive hedging plants and trees. Whadaya mean you've never heard of die back? C'mon! Everybody's heard of die-back!!

Why do newcomers always behave like the drooling idiots they despise in others they see all around them?  The Danes call them Landsby tossers. Village idiots. Ironically, the term is usually reserved for established country dwellers. Moi? Not for the morons bringing their pre-packed ignorance with them in the furniture lorry!

No ride today as it became steadily cloudier and rained later. No bonfires today. Except for the one left smouldering, unattended, overnight...

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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