Wind And Fire

The wind brings and it takes away. Kelsey found a Pizza Hut jacket in the back yard. At least I think the wind blew it in. Maybe the dogs found an intruder in the back yard and the jacket is all that is left of him. I don't really care about any of that. I just want to know where the pizza is.

There was also a patio umbrella in my yard. Having no use for either the jacket or umbrella, I tossed both over the wall that is upwind from me. If it's not that neighbor's stuff, then it can be tossed over their wall and the wall after that until the owner is found. Hey, it could work.

The wind also took away some of my skin, not directly, but in a totally foreseeable manner, I think. I lost half of a large tree in the wind. Trying to wrestle the broken part of the tree onto the lawn, a branch broke, sending me flying into an apple tree. The scrapes on my arm were the result.

On the bright side, the apple tree is now in full sun, so maybe it will actually produce fruit next year.




For the last couple of weeks off to the north and west, it's looked like the world is coming to an end. The smoke from the Day fire has been ominously hanging over our heads. This picture was taken the first day or two of the fire when it was still just a baby.

It hasn't affected me directly, except for a couple of days when traffic was diverted from the 5 to the 14. All of the huge trucks that normally travel the 5 were on my little 14 where they don't belong. It was annoying, but not blog worthy.

Today, I had the incredible luxury of an afternoon nap and woke up to helicopters. Lots of them. That's not something I can easily ignore, so I got up, went outside and looked around. I couldn't see a fire, there was a hill in the way, but I could see that the helicopters appeared to be near Placerita Canyon. The news later confirmed that Placerita Canyon was once again on fire and people were being evacuated.

I once considered buying a house in Placerita Canyon. The house I was shown looked like a darling mountain cabin in a small residential tract and was surrounded my miles of brush and trees with only one small road leading to civilization. It struck me as being too dangerous and I didn't want to have to worry about fires starting when I'm not home and unable to rescue my dogs. Once a road is closed, no one is allowed back in for any reason. It's that particular housing tract that is now being evacuated. I think that I made a good decision.

Even though it's now dark, the helicopters are still flying. That's unusual. Flying in the dark through hilly terrain and high power lines is incredibly dangerous. I guess it has been decided there's not much choice. Much of the area is hilly and inaccessible to ground crews.

Yeah, I think that I made a really good decision not to buy in Placerita.