I had a fire in my fireplace for my waning moon work in early October, and before the new moon, I cleaned out the entire fireplace. Like bare clean. The ashes were strewn on the compost pile in the backyard where a couple of days of rain were about to happen.
I set a large log on the fireplace grill and put a cardboard box in front to act as a riser. I want everything but one thing that I put in here between now and Samhain to be burnable. The one non-burnable thing is a timer pumpkin light, which goes off for four hours nightly and minds itself.
For the new moon, I put the light onto the riser, with freshly-charged rechargeable batteries, and turned it on at approximately 5pm. It ran until 9pm, just as promised and then switched off. Why should this light show be happening in a rapidly moldering pumpkin in my Pacific Northwest yard? I’ll be having a nightly fireplace light show as the evenings slowly get darker earlier. Sunset is about 6:30pm at the moment, and will be a little before 6pm by Samhain, so my living room should be plenty dark when the light kicks on at 5.
Edited to add: There is a touch of weird motor noise where plastic rubs plastic but after a couple nights of use, it’s clear it runs accurately for four hours from 5pm to 9pm. It’s not too loud but there’s an eerie quality to the noise. I have a silicon lube I use on my alchemical glassware which never dries out and I smeared a dab or two of that on a couple of parts on the light casing and the noise is lessened a bit but still eerie. It sounds like Muffled Moaning Myrtle is up my chimney.