Thursday Morning

This photo was taken by my wife last Thursday morning. It shows the burned area between our home and the neighbors behind us. The mist is partly smoke from hot spots, which are still being monitored by the fire crews in the area, more than 600 at the last count. They are not only monitoring areas which are still smoking, but cutting down trees that are threatening roads and power lines, and excavating fire lanes through the burned areas. A number of homes in our area burned, but the firefighters, our heroes, saved most of them.

The enclosed area on the left is my vegetable garden which did not suffer from the fire and which we are trying to keep up with. We have it enclosed to keep the deer out. They eat everything otherwise and can be a huge nuisance. We harvested the garden the Monday we were first home again after being evacuated and have harvested it several times since. We canned fourteen quarts of salsa, seven quarts of vegetable soup and five quarts of marinara sauce the last few days and have peppers and cucumbers to do yet..