Joined at the Hip.

Spike has adopted a new place to sleep....makes knitting a bit of a challenge.

It was a beautiful springlike day today. We took the rain covers off the furniture on the porch and discovered that there is mold (mildew?) on the wood. It was relatively easy to sand most of it off, but John was dispatched to the hardware store for teak oil which will be applied tomorrow. We had thought to sit on the porch with our coffee but a stiff wind gust dislodged some of the few remaining burned leaves and their branches and hurled them at us so we went to the other side of the house to finish our coffee. 

We surveyed the trees in the lot on the other side of the fence and decided that most of them are not going to come back. The one right on the other side of the fence has a few springs of green leaves near the top but most of it looks pretty dead. However there is a hole in the blackened trunk which is favored by several kinds of birds. 

Out of the stand of four huge eucalyptus trees one of them shows no sign of life on its black branches, one of them got a whole coat of new leaves but they all died, one is still questionable and one might make it. They are not on our property and we don't know what Janet and Paul are planning to do. It will cost a fortune to take them down but they are so tall that they are quite hazardous.

The green grass has grown over most of the trash around the 'bunker'...Ruta's name for the house up the hill which seems to be a constant work in progress. At least they have been working on the site since we moved here almost ten years ago.It's looking a lot better on the outside, but I think there is still a lot to be done on the inside. When the green grass turns golden in the summer it will need to be mowed (Cal Fire regulations) and whatever trash hasn't returned to the earth in the form of mulch will be revealed once again.

Right now the evening light is beautiful and I can see several cyclists  toiling up the steep road  to the Hood Mountain Regional Park which has been closed since the Glass fire ripped through it and down the creek to our neighborhood. We always liked it because  of it's stately trees, open meadows and hillsides and glimpses of the steep inclines leading up to Hood Mountain, but it was closed for two years when we moved here because the road washed out. Now I have no idea the what the damage  is, but I suspect it is extensive and the road is so narrow that we are reluctant to drive up there lest we meet a dump truck or a construction vehicle.  

I don't know how many people are rebuilding up there. The evacuation in the dark ahead of the fire that we could see coming over the ridge must have been scary.  Reminders of the fire are everywhere, but thoughts of fire have receded with the cooler weather and the rain we got earlier .