Yesterday an idiot who lives immediately south of us decided to start a brush fire. Had he had a brain, he might have noticed the wind rustling in the dry grass around his brush fire, and not started the fire in the first place. Hopefully he enjoys the large bill he gets from the State or County, whoever is in charge of extinguishing forest fires.\u00a0 Gotta hand it to the local fire fighters.\u00a0 They jump right on top of a small fire unless they are overwhelmed by huge fires as happened a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
We had planes and helicopters flying around the mountain for hours, basically until it got too dark to fly.\u00a0 And the fire department still has four trucks on the scene today, making sure that there aren’t any hot spots hiding out. \u00a0 We saw the trucks when we went out this afternoon to see exactly where the fire was, but it was too far off the road for us to get a picture. Scary! We were in a direct line with that fire and if the fire department hadn’t gotten it out as fast as they did, I kind of shudder to think what would have happened. Actually I’m not going to think about it.<\/p>\n
Since we couldn’t actually see the fire damage, we went for a drive and made a 30 mile loop, up the drainage where the fire was, over the top of the mountain through forest service lands, and back down the other side.\u00a0 We looked at scenery and flowers instead. We’ve talked about making that particular drive since we moved here 11 years ago. Amazing place – there are Western Red Cedars up that drainage! I love cedars but they like a damp climate, and it’s too dry where we are.<\/p>\n
We’ll have to go up that road again next spring and see what birds we can hear calling. It will be different birds, to some extent, than we have on our drier side of the ridge.\u00a0 It is a really rough road.\u00a0 We should probably take the tire pump, and electric chain saw with us.<\/p>\n
Wild Tiger Lilies were all along the side of the road.<\/p>\n
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![\"Dan](\"https:\/\/redmeadow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/070417-daylily.jpg\")
<\/a>Dan grew up with these flowers so he was very happy to see them.\u00a0 They also prefer a damper climate.<\/p><\/div>\n
Lupin carpeted the forest floor anywhere there was a break in the canopy.<\/p>\n
<\/a>I love this color of blue almost shading into lilac as the flowers fade.<\/p><\/div>\n
Scarlet Trumpets were in rocky areas with bright sun.<\/p>\n