there goes the neighborhood..

[randomstasis]

No fireworks on the 4th, because all the firetrucks are busy, and there's not enough firefighters to fight the fires we already got. ;( Luckily, people have been responsible (or just scared), so I heard no illicit whizzbangs last night

Comments

[ilikemyhumordry]

Wow. Glad you're safe. Here's to staying that way; *raises glass*

[randomstasis]

Thanks- *refills your glass* and I'm so sorry i never got back to you- it's been a hell of a month, one damn thing after another, never stopps. But even the friends I was most worried about (though they sent the horses out, they decided to stay after the area was evacuated to fight the fire at their cabin if it came down that far) the fires in general slowed down, it was pretty scary (by which I mean downright apocalyptic) for awhile, and another fire is obscuring everything again now, but it's really nowhere near us.
hope you are having a better summer chez you!

[ilikemyhumordry]

Glad to hear you and your friends are alright. :)Glad to hear things are calming down.

Summer was... interesting. You're right, when the hits come they keep coming. Gives you a new perspective on humanity, though... we can make it through some pretty horrible things. A bit of hope in the storm, I guess.

Thanks for the reply! Keep safe!

[randomstasis]

thanks for your understanding, and your sympathy-I'm finally getting over the zombie phase, and everything is done that I can do right now.
When will it be posted? I'm just starting to try to catch up, but I want to see!.

[crystalwren_fic]

Have the trees started to regrow yet?

[randomstasis]

Oh, no..we'll have to wait another season for that, at least. One thing, the fires took out a lot of beetle killed pine, that had been spreading so that half the mountains looked like they'd already been through a fire. I can't seem to post any of the pics we took on a drive just a week before the fire, so you could see how awful it is, but with luck, the burning will slow down that infestation.

[crystalwren_fic]

Watching forests die slowly is its own kind of trauma. A couple of years ago I was crossing the Toowoomba mountain ranges on a regular basis. It hadn't rained there for nearly a decade and every time I went through it looked worse. Burnt brown. Of course, a few months after my final trip the rains finally did come; all at once. And hell if anyone can quite grasp the concept of flash flooding on top of a mountain range.

I find it kind of hard to envisage a pine forest. There are farms and plantations galore around, but a proper, movie feature forest of pines just doesn't seem quite right. Even when I was doing my contiki Europe trip through Germany and Switzerland, I still couldn't come to terms with what I saw. One good thing about eucalypts and melaleuca; they may be highly flammable, but they come back fast. And insect infestations tend to be discouraged because of the natural oils.

Here's hoping that the flames do make life a little harder for those nasty little buggers.