After the Burn

After a trip to Lowe's for tomato plants and potting soil and a trip to Wal-Mart for a few essentials, and a bit of house-cleaning, I got a sudden urge for some Mexican food from La Cabana, so I called in an order mid-afternoon. I used the opportunity for another car trip for the wee ones and again Coco was pretty much okay with it, but Mojo had an even worse time than before. I am beginning to think that he may very well suffer from a little touch of car sickness, because his first move after arriving home was to dash over and eat some grass. I'm still hoping he will improve with practice.

This was my first time to drive past the burned area since last Sunday. I made a few brief stops to get photos to try and show how awful it all was.

The house in the background in this photo burned to the ground, leaving only the steps and some concrete pillars.

This is the hill where the Wildfire Cafe sat, with a half-dozen or so little antique shops behind it.

This is what remains of the antique stores to the left of the drive way.

And this is the Alum Creek Cemetery. The dark ground is burned area and you can see scorch marks on the trunks of some of the trees.

Some of the roads are still closed while the cleanup takes place and we still have a few fire crews on hand monitoring potential flare ups. The local paper reported yesterday that people who violate the burn ban are no longer getting warnings, but instead are receiving tickets with big fines. Thank heavens. We are all really jumpy around here and I even had a momentary heart flutter when I arrived home from my little jaunt and smelled something burning that turned out to be the neighbor's grill at work.

The afternoon was spent potting my two tomato plants and my two pots of marigolds and begonias and filling all the bird feeders and water bowls. I had lots of help, as you can probably imagine. I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon in March than by burying my hands in a big pot of soil and plopping in a tomato plant.

LSW