The first snow is always magical, isn’t it?
Early in the ‘event.’
And a bit later.
For a while, the rest of the world fades away. All the insanity, the stress, the anger, the hate, the intolerance, the bigotry, the misogyny, the cruelty, all of it fades away for a day and we are enveloped in wonder.
I don’t always recognize the world we’re living in. I don’t want to. But I recognize the beauty of a winter snowfall. I recognize the beauty of the sun coming up on a snowy Sunday morning.
And I recognize the smell of good things baking in the oven while the snow falls ever so softly outside the kitchen window.
Happy Sunday.
Cookies hot from the oven along with a favorite hot beverage and a snowy day….enjoy!
I will, Wendy. Thank you!
It’s all so beautiful! I love the quiet that the blanket of snow brings. We have cold here, today, but the only visible signs (other than the fire in the fireplace) are the windows weeping, like cold glasses of sweet tea. And now, the mopping up. Enjoy your cozy White Sunday.
Had breakfast with our friends. A lovely day.
What a lovely post! One of the most important things I can do, for me, is find a way out of all the things in the world that are making me anxious. This post helps!
Yes. We have to find those moments of peace.
Thank you for such a beautiful post. It makes me feel like we should feel in our lives, warm and comfy. Like home.
You are most welcome, Brooke.
The first snow is special. Peaceful which is something we all need. Oh those cookies look good. I think I’ll bake some oatmeal cookies today. Hugs.
Peaceful, I’ll take. Even if it’s only for a second or two.
One of your loveliest posts ever, Claudia. I think just stopping, standing, watching & listening to the natural world is often the best – and only – antidote we have to the current, not-always-very-pleasant world in which we now find ourselves. Thanks for this reminder of that. Have a warm & wonderful [and cookie] Sunday. Peace. 🍪
#Resist
Thank you, Janet. You, too. Peace.
so lovely!
our snow usually comes in the form of an ice storm sometime around February.
if it ever does arrive as yours has it is always heaven. the world stops. and is quiet.
Stella and you are stars! i can smell those cookies from here. YUM!
More cookies coming tomorrow, Tammy. Just didn’t have time today.
So beautiful! We had snow early this year and now it’s melting, just when we want it for Christmas! They are predicted we might get some next week but no promises.
Your cookies look scrumptious. Enjoy!
X Chy
I hope you get some, Chy!
Claudia, Baking cookies is always the best smell on a cold day. That and a pot of soup. I think many of us got a real taste of winter this weekend. Stay warm. Be careful too. Blessings, xoxo, Susie
Thank you, Susie.
well put, claudia … and beautiful images. thanks for the uplift! happy sunday to everyone.
kathy in iowa
You are welcome, Kathy.
What a lovely post Claudia! For me, snow is a gentle reminder that we can find peace in the natural world. Something we desperately need right now. Hope everyone has a wonderful day!
Absolutely. Thank you, Denise.
Mmmmmm. Baking cookies, chili, soups, hot cider, and all of the other comfort foods make a perfect addition
at first snowfall. Thanks for sharing.
Your wonderful photos make for a
sense of quiet rest today.
I’m glad. Thank you, Joan.
A sweet post Claudia…reminds me of old times…cookies are a great way to block out the woes of this world…if only for a while….I like seeing pictures of your red shed in the snow…it looks so pretty…
Thank you, Nancy. That shed is very photogenic.
Very beautiful, and I’m very hot here.
It’s cold here, Edis!
Very calming for me to see the beautiful snow; I wish we had some of it here in fire-ridden Southern California. Even a spot of rain would mean a lot to us right now (but none is in the forecast). We could use wet, white, cold, icy instead of dry, orange, hot, fiery.
After today, I’m not going to talk here about the wildfire anymore on the blog; this is Claudia’s blog, not mine. It’s a depressing subject and we don’t come here for that! Your sweet readers and sweet-you, Claudia, have left such kind thoughts for me and my poor, weary California but you’ve all got your own probs now with winter-weather events, besides which it’s the holidays ahead, which are for joy and hope and all things good and fun, merry & bright.
I’ll just say this in closing on the subject: My husband and I are now coming up on 6 days into this inferno called The Thomas Fire, but we are okay, we didn’t lose our home and our town has survived. After seeing fierce, roaring fire/flames five blocks from my house, I can’t ever be quite the same again and I’m reassessing again if I want to continue to live here. The Santa Ana winds are still bad today but the authorities are trying to explain that the fire is now terrain-driven rather than wind-driven. I don’t exactly understand all that, but we are at 15% containment, which is better than zero, although the fire has now burned 173,000 acres as of 10am. We had a huge mushroom cloud of smoke to the north last night at end of day but this is the backcountry burning, not our foothills. To the west, it’s burning now up the coast to Santa Barbara. This is the lovely Carpinteria/Montecito area, and my heart cries for them. My parents once lived in Carpinteria. Both my husband and I, separately in years before we married, lived in Santa Barbara. Again, it’s just…heartbreak.
So, tremendous stress – and people you run into are all pretty ragged from the fear and worry because fire is scary and destructive. I personally know people who’ve lost their homes but their gratitude to just be alive is very inspiring. Today, trying to get back to any kind of semblance of normalcy after being on red alert since Monday night, my husband and I are going to bring back into the house some of the stuff we’ve had packed in the cars for evacuation as I need to pay bills and get to my paperwork. They think schools will try to reopen here next Wednesday; they’ve been closed since last Tuesday. I think we got four hours of sleep last night, so that’s a record (after hardly any for too many nights on fire watch) and, to add to the bliss, we awoke to some blue sky; blessedly-beautiful blue sky.
The navy combat pilots are in the helicopters with the 400 gal bucket drops of water on the fire. They stop at sunset but the tanker jets full of the phosphorus (pink slime, to suffocate flames) fly all night. They are so brave; it is very dangerous work. The National Guard is out to protect neighborhoods with damaged and burned-to-the-ground homes; people whose homes are a total loss still cannot get in there to even comb thru rubble. Every time a helicopter flies over my roof, I blow them kisses. Our heroes.
Claudia, thank you again for letting me get out my thoughts but we all need to now look forward to pleasant holidays ahead. My Christmas will be about thankfulness and 2018 will be about organizing my life and, cliché as it sounds, making each day count. And doing more to support our first responders.
Yesterday evening at sunset, we felt it was safe enough and the wind had pulled away some of the smoke somewhat, that we drove to the town of Santa Paula’s small municipal airport (no tower, but a helpful runway) to watch all the fire rescue helicopters come in as they ended their long, hard, dangerous day of bucket drops on the flames. It was an incredible sight to see one after another do their vertical landings on the tarmac, tricky in the high wind; we counted ten copters all coming in at the same time, like a wave, like black birds against the Tequila Sunrise sky. Felt like we were in the middle of an action movie. Little children with N-95 breathing masks over their noses/mouths in the crowd, their parents explaining to them about how the helicopters are helping the fire, so that they will feel comforted that they are okay and safe. I’m feeling very, very aware of the children; this is all hard for them to understand because it’s been so apocalyptic and urgent.
Countless people working behind the scenes of the fire in general – but, very educational to observe the air effort for the fire – the pilots, the machinery; the guys who drag the long fuel hoses from tanker trucks so that the helicopters are ready to go at daybreak; the guys taking other long, heavy hoses to fill up the water buckets; a mass of activity. Very impressive staging; they definitely know what they’re doing. Just a lot of dedicated people fighting this natural disaster the likes of which I hope never again to see in my lifetime, although our governor – who I happen to like; a reassuring fixture here since my 20s – reminded us yesterday that California is getting hotter and this may be our new global-warming/climate change ‘normal’.
Vicki, everyone wants to hear from you. Everyone here is concerned. Your accounts are vivid and we get a sense of the reality of the situation that we wouldn’t get in a news report. All this is to say, keep on sharing. We want to hear from you and you should never feel like you’ve taken up too much space or time. Okay?
I’m so glad you and your husband are safe.
I feel the love; thank you, Claudia, and everyone here. It’s hard to not still feel apprehension as we go into the 2nd week now of the killer known as California wildfire. Make no mistake, we are still under heavy black smoke and white smoke; it blows in, it blows out, it swirls around; I haven’t seen the fire on the ridges now like I was – but, occasionally, we get the orange glow, reminding us that Mother Nature is angry, and determined to have the upper hand, and she’s still hovering right there over the mountain.
The Washington Post online today had a video which features my high school friend, Bill, walking around his still-smoldering, burned-out house. His family has a modest ranch (a few small homes on it, including his own) in an unincorporated area between Santa Paula and the back-in-the-hills town of Ojai here in the Ventura County area of Southern California. I thought he was holding it together pretty good in the video. He tried to joke that he still had a tomato plant standing.
Emotions still close to the surface for me; I cry at the drop of a hat. Trying to wind down the anxiety now. We’ve all felt in so much jeopardy. I saw a map yesterday evening of the number of burned-down homes in the city of Ventura and it renders a person speechless; again, homes burned which would never have burned except for that perfect storm of factors (low humidity, dry brush, no rain, etc.) which were our doom (and you can ask any person in these towns and we will all say, even the fire authorities, that we have NEVER experienced a wind like we had last Monday night which is what carried this fire so far and so fast; mind you, I’ve lived on the Gulf Coast with hurricane threat and tornadoes; I know WIND).
You’re going to read now about the celebs like Oprah and Ellen having to evacuate Montecito/Santa Barbara (2 hrs north of L.A.) but remember that they are not the majority; these ‘ritzy’ places have all kinds of people from every income level and all kinds of backgrounds and jobs. In other words, it’s not all the ‘biggies’ – it’s a lot of people from all walks of life having a really hard time in the fire and not everybody lives back in those most-private, cloistered, hidden hills of the super-rich. A lot of lower-income people can’t afford tenant’s insurance, for instance. They lose everything in the fires, with no way to easily recapture the life they’d had. But it doesn’t matter who you are, it’s painful. I feel as much for Ellen the entertainer (and her evacuated pets) as I do for my friend, Cheri, who sits in a hotel room with her elderly dog and not much else at the moment, with Christmas cards being sent to her at an address which no longer exists because even the mail box burned to molten metal.
I’m wondering, too, what this is going to do to the avocado crop and lemon groves. The orchards climb up into the foothills and, in Carpinteria particularly, there are also large flower farms (cut flowers) and greenhouses (I’ve toured the greenhouses; they are vast, as are the acreages; interestingly, some are owned by generations of Dutch families who must have had experience growing flowers in Holland/The Netherlands). But right now, I grieve for families; I grieve for loss of life. Of animals who’ve perished. Prayers and healing will be a continuous need for Southern Californians.
But we’ll rebound. Last night at the little airport, a woman I’ve never met before in my life, who couldn’t speak English, clung to me, and me to her, as we watched the helicopters land and take off again with their water buckets. She was there with her husband and five wonderfully-behaved children. After the copters were grounded for the night and some 30 or 40 of us began to leave, her one little boy said to me shyly, his words muffled thru his breathing mask, “Happy Holidays!” and I was so struck by the overall…how can I say it, what would be the right word…coming together, of young and old, men & women, a guy on a Harley and another in doctor’s scrubs; a friendliness, a benevolence; concern; empathy; some sort of something tying us together, I guess mostly of, ‘hey, we made it; we’re all alive’ – goodwill, person to person. It’s in the Bible, right? “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” (Toward everybody.) That in time of crisis, people WILL help one another; will comfort one another and wish each other well. We’re all in this together. Humans all. Had I thought that, as Americans, we’ve lost some of that? Yes, I think I have, especially over this past year of news headlines and tragic/troubling incidences both abroad and here in our country. But goodwill is still there; nobody can take it away from us.
Thank you for updating Vicki. Your words and descriptions are so evocative. We get a real sense of the reality of these fires. Stay in touch. We want to hear from you.
Thank you, Claudia.
xo
Vicki, I’m glad not only that you are currently safe, but you have gained from this horrifying experience a new life perspective and strength that I hope will serve you well in the future. Please remember to take time out to enjoy the holidays and be thankful. Regaining your mental, psychological and physical equilibrium after the Thomas fire trauma will take some time…I remind you to be good to yourself, but I have a feeling I need not remind you to be good to others!
Thank you for your words, Wendy T. Christmas now is tricky. I had been so excited for the holiday and I seem to have lost it now; I have no inside decorations. I’d planned to decorate last week, but then we lost the week. I thought at dinner tonight that I need to focus now and try to at least get up a small tree on a table. I think soft lights on it might be soothing. I need to brighten things up for my husband, too. I have a ‘live’ evergreen wreath that came; I hosed it in the shower today to freshen it up because it’s been so dry inside the house (as outside; no moisture in the air). I walk by it sometimes and get a whiff of ‘Christmas smell’ as I go into the kitchen. People are starting to turn the outside Christmas lights on again (house lights/string lights). My husband has to totally re-do ours; they’re all askew from violent wind, but we’ve never had a day yet where the wind stops in the daytime where you can even get up on a ladder and set things right. Our community Christmas tree went dark as of Dec 4 after having been lit Thanksgiving weekend; I think the wind may have damaged the strings. It takes a crane to go ‘way, ‘way up high to decorate it. (The tree has been there since long before I was a baby.) It wouldn’t be healthy right now for a maintenance/city worker to go up there with his breathing mask on in smoky air.
The guy with the tree lot has had a dismal time; no one is interested in buying a ‘real’ Christmas tree in smoke, hot weather and ash. I’d wanted to send Christmas cards this year; bought them; now, they sit. I’ve talked to more than one person and it seems we’re all quite distracted and preoccupied and still edgy, but I’m sure we’ll try hard to ‘get it together’ in the next 10 days or so. I feel a need to be respectful – that if families who lost everything can be brave and make an attempt to be upbeat and forward-thinking, and grateful, and vow to still have their Christmas, it’s important for all of us to follow their lead of optimism and, of course, yes, my overwhelming feeling is of relief and gratitude that I lived thru this event and am still here to talk about it. I’ve said this before but I am hyper aware of the kids right now; children deserve their Santa and their presents under the tree and the favorite traditions. The little things have been so frightened these past days and they’ve not been able to go to school.
So, yes, thank you for your words, Wendy T; very wise. I’ll heed what you’re saying. We’ll pull it around and get our ‘happy’ back on. It’s what we do, any of us; we rally; take the next step. Onward. The British personality/cook named Nigella Lawson talks about Christmas in one of her cookbooks and of how Christmas isn’t always so fun for a lot of people and maybe it’s hard to get the Christmas spirit going but, in her view, you just have to make yourself get into it, with the cookie baking, the wrapping of presents, the decorating and all that alone will put you in the mood (the doing of it).
There’s something really special in Ventura (a city which has been hit so badly with destruction of so many homes from the fire), and that’s the Father Serra Cross which sits high on a hill/bluff behind and above City Hall at what’s called Grant Park. From the cross (the current cross is from the 1940s; made of wood; it’s very large), there’s a panoramic view of a wide section of Ventura including the ocean and stunning offshore islands called The Channel Islands. I’ve been to the cross probably 500 times in my life; people get married there. It is one of my favorite places. It’s a place to breathe. To pray. To walk. To feast the eye. Feel alive, in the breeze, the sun. Ventura’s Botanical Garden is there. The cross with a view of the sea is on my screen saver; a photo my husband took last year on a clear day.
So, what happened last week is that The Thomas Fire burned right up to the cross. City Hall – a beautiful building from the very-early 1900s – survived. The Botanical Garden is gone; wiped out. The fire stopped at the cross; it still has a little green grass around it. It is surrounded by a blackened world, but the cross remains, and you just can’t believe what this means to Venturans and others of us in the county. It’s such a beacon of hope. It’s part of our California history and the Spanish missions from centuries ago but it’s really an iconic part of Ventura; and especially poignant at Christmas. I just feel that with the cross still standing tall, it makes us stronger right now. It sends a strong message.
Hi Vicki, I feel your reticence for the holidays, but also a lot of hope in your words. Concentrate on making Christmas personal for you and your family…a few decorations, a little baking (food can be a comfort and a reminder), walk to the cross. Write the cards in January or even February to wish people a happier new year, and don’t think you have to rush to get them out now. You need some down time to recover, not more pressure to conform. If Ventura will eventually replant the garden, perhaps you’ll find a volunteer position to help out?
That’s a great idea, to volunteer in rebuilding the gardens. One friend I have who nearly lost her house (she lives near there and homes were leveled by fire on her street) is a charter member. I’ll be talking to her about it. When my mom died, this friend memorialized her with a garden stone on the premises and those stones and paths will still be there; the plants can regrow. Another good idea from you to do a New Year’s greeting with cards instead of trying to do them right now. I’m decluttering, have a lot of holiday stuff in storage as Claudia does in her shed and, in the coming year, when I keep at it and keep downsizing, I’ve decided that when I find the rest of my ornaments, I might just put them on a tree to look at them even if it’s July (before I move them along to someone else). We can feel Joy To The World any time; it doesn’t have to be just December. My overriding thoughts right now revolve around peace. And I thank you for your many kindnesses, Wendy T.
to vicki …
prayers continue for you all. stay safe!
and claudia …
you are a bright spot of common sense, coziness, compassion. thank you.
kathy in iowa
Thank you, kathy, as always, for your kindness – and, yes, you said it perfectly, Claudia is the best!
Up near Seattle, they are seeing smoke in the air from the California fires. It happened last year also. When are we going to learn to build homes and the power system so that there is not this kind of destruction ?
Yes, I’m the first to say, as one living here in California, that we continue to build ‘view’ homes up in the hills which we know are going to burn because wildfire isn’t going to go away. But in this particular fire, at least the Thomas Fire I found myself in the path of, many people lost their homes which weren’t in a fire zone. It was a (I hope) once-in-a-lifetime wind which carried embers unbelievable distances. One fireman was interviewed who lost his own home of 25 years and he spoke of how he’d scoped it out; he’d bought where he felt it was safe all those years before.
I just heard on TV that they are now already feeling the effect of smoke far north of even Santa Barbara into other northern counties, so this is really disturbing and as Gov. Jerry Brown also mentioned, expensive. Any time we have these natural disasters, like in New Orleans with Katrina, or homes built for enjoyment in a coastal environment subject to hurricanes like Florida, it costs the government (taxpayers) a lot of money.
I’m beginning to think there’s just no place safe to live. My husband was in a deadly blizzard once in Nebraska. He got trapped in a car on an impassable road; he was lucky he didn’t die. My relatives in Texas deal with too many tornadoes. My grandparents dealt with the dust bowl in Oklahoma. I remember reading of the Johnstown flood; wasn’t that Ohio? No, I think it was Pennsylvania. You can get tremendous heat in Arizona. I love California; my collective family has been here for over a hundred years. But I’m about done with it.
I was thinking more about the types of houses we build than where. Instead of a house built of wood, how about brick houses with slate roofs. In the long run it might be cheaper than replacing the house once , twice or more. Also, I heard this was caused by power lines being blown over by Santa Ana winds and sparking. Would solar panels on each house be less risky? We build houses with fireplaces and then have to have burn bans. How about no fireplaces for burning wood which makes sparks, and try some other idea instead?? I’m told pellet stoves do not put out sparks which can start a wildfire. How about people not smoking? How about getting rid of fire pits in back yards? just think we are not using our brains.
What you say is really true! I just heard today that at least one of the fires may be a power line issue and that came from SoCalEdison themselves so I’m very interested to learn more. I think the fire down near the Getty Center in L.A was discovered to be a campfire. You know, a historical home that backs up to my property is from 1901 and I was talking to the guy who lives there; he says it’s basically indestructible, his slate roof, original to the home. We can’t have brick homes due to earthquakes but, like my friend Cheri whose home burned to the ground on Dec 4 in the fire, she had a large wood pergola attached to the entire back of her house and she had wood balconies on her second story, so those would have caught fire quickly.
More and more people here are getting solar panels but it ain’t cheap. If it was more affordable, more people would convert to solar. And, yes, fireplaces scare me despite their ambiance. I live in an older neighborhood and when people drum up their fireplaces for the winter, I know darn well they haven’t called a chimney sweep to inspect for the season. I live in my dad’s house and when he got a new neighbor about 12 years ago, and the first thing they did was put a chimenea (outdoor fireplace) at the top of the smallish hill behind our houses, my dad had to have a long talk with him and, say, yes, use your brains, you have trees all around you and dry brush that hasn’t been cleared; you can’t have anything with fire up there. The guy listened and took out the chimenea. But now a neighbor two doors down from me has one up there, so they put us ALL in jeopardy.
I don’t quite understand why some wildfires start but it seems sometimes it can be something atmospheric with, as I’d said another time here, a perfect storm of weather factors, so there’s probably no way to prevent that, especially considering the whole climate change thing. In which case I wouldn’t want a home in a back canyon or up in the mountains or even in the foothills but people will always build in those places here, for the view and park-like settings and privacy. They do need to think of what they’re building and a wood house isn’t a great idea. There’s a big ‘ol house on a hill above our cemetery but he has a wide, wide ground clearance around him and, guess what, fire burned all around him and decimated his orchards last week, but his house wasn’t touched because he’d created a perimeter; a fire break. You’re right, just use some common sense. Like don’t plant trees right up against your house. But, you know, people love their trees and they love the shade.
It’s a dilemma, and there needs to be stricter and stricter building codes, for sure.
Yes, that is what I think about. I live in Western Washington, known for its rain but we have dry summers and all the trees around get dry, and then almost everyone builds a makeshift fire pit in their back yards and use them in summer! New homes going in near us are building them with outdoor fireplaces!! Just because trees are greenish doesn’t mean they won’t burn.
I am not an expert in all methods of building houses so there may be an alternative to brick in earthquake areas. (we are in one too) But in the mid 60s I lived in a house a block from the Gulf of Mexico that gets hit by hurricanes. It was built in 1923 of Concrete blocks and was still standing last I checked, a few years ago. The rest of the block is mostly gone, or been rebuilt from the last few hurricanes. Living in Kansas I learned in history class that soddy homes were built to protect from the prairie fires and the tornadoes. But then they started building victorian homes of wood and now they have disasters with tornadoes. Also in Asia they are building dome shaped homes which survive hurricanes and could survive tornadoes in our country, but when we rebuild they build Victorian or New England style houses with wood every single time.
Very interesting, everything you’ve said. I just saw on TV tonight that California is, as of today, putting stricter rules out there for utility companies and their need to inspect and keep trees away from their equipment. I feel like the homeowner should help with that, if even people would be aware and call the power company to alert them. It’s really tricky here with my area and trees. Oaks and sycamores are coveted, honored and very protected with city and county ordinances. With my last house, I had to pay an arborist to inspect our three oak trees on the property and attest, by written letter to the homeowner’s insurance company and the City that they were healthy, which meant they would not be allowed to be cut down. The insurance company could have, I guess, still chosen not to insure us, but they did; clearly it was a risk for them (where this house is, on a lower hill above town, the fire burned last week only two blocks from it, next street up). I have to say, I really could have done without those trees; I once paid $2,500 to have them trimmed as much as we were allowed; they were massive and messy and ‘way too big and close to the house (house built in 1923, just like your block one but this was stucco and plaster); their majesty, those grand trees, would have been better suited to the hills where no people live. But of course, the trees were there first, when indeed nobody lived there, til they created an early subdivision in those near hills and our little cottage got built around them. One oak is from the mid-to-late 1800s.
Coincidentally, since it seems the only subject we can talk about is fire (as we’re ringed with it here right now), I was just asking my husband about prairie fires! He has a detailed family history from the prairie in Nebraska/Kansas/Wyoming. We actually have 19th century photos showing his ancestors next to a soddy. I’d said to him, “Can you imagine living nowhere near neighbors, you have a little house with a prairie fire gaining speed, maybe it gets your house/barn and even your horse, so that a mom/dad/kids are just sitting there with nothing, miles from anything, no transportation, maybe some food in a root cellar; like, what would they have done?” So there you have it; the soddy was important for a lot of reasons. You’ve just taught me something new about the value of a soddy! I’d thought they had them because of the scarcity of wood on the prairie, so they used what materials were available.
An aside: My husband has three sets of work acquaintances who’ve moved to western/coastal Washington in the last three years . They’re really crooking the finger to get us to move up there, too. Jefferson County/Kitsap County/Olympic peninsula. Sounds like you’ve lived a lot of places. Are you liking it there? Just curious! Sounds like I couldn’t escape wildfire there, anymore than here, Or earthquakes!
I must say I have enjoyed our conversation. Yes, I have lived many places. Military brat and military wife. I love it up here but as you say we have many of the same dangers. Plus falling trees.
I am a tree lover, trees provide our oxygen to breathe and I think we should plant acres of them everywhere. But our world seems to want to cut them down over and over again. Was canvassing our neighborhood one year. We have a huge greenbelt of trees and one neighbor who said he was afraid a tree or two would fall on his house and he thought the city should cut them all down!!! I didn’t have the courage to ask why he bought a house right smack dab up against the trees as close as you can get when there were many houses in the area that were away from the trees!!!
Growing up in Kansas, one thing you learn is about the Dust Bowl era. Kansas was part of that too. They started planting trees around their fields and in the 60s I could go up on a hill and see the fields all ringed with trees to save them from the wind. I do love western washington, and the reason is that they are much more accepting of children who are handicapped/retarded. We have a severely retarded child who has been seen by neighbors as simply a child not a curse laid upon us by God. Such enlightened people are what I love most about our area. And the lack of sun and heat is something she needs.
Claudia has my permission to give you my email address so you can email me if you like.
Thank you for all your recent kindness, information, observations and thoughts, jan, and I’m so glad that living in your part of Washington has worked out well for you and your family. It sounds like it’s given you some peace and comfort.
We had a lot of trees fall in the drought; you could be out in the ‘country’ around here in SoCalif, say in 2015-16, and see a tree toppled over that you knew had been there no doubt for a very long time (oak trees). Even the most deep-rooted trees suffered from such a lack of rainfall; the shallow-rooted ones never had a chance. We have wind breaks in this agricultural part of the state I live in; many ranches are old so their wind breaks are old, generally eucalyptus trees which do indeed fall; it seems in later years they’re replacing these breaks with a type of poplar but I’m not very familiar with species of trees.
And, yes, Claudia is so generous about having her readers check back (on a limited basis) to continue conversations on her blog which is certainly part of why she has such a loyal readership. (Thanks, Claudia!)
I know. We can’t keep taking over the landscape without paying a price.
Hi again Vicki and Claudia,
Thanks for updating us again. Even from afar these fires have their impact and amidst gratitude for what was spared may all those of you whose timelines have been crashed and altered in lesser and greater ways find the trust and hope in moving forward.Like you say in making each day count especially when the drama dies down and the daily and long term details of all this need be dealt with. And,thank-you for for bringing along with your grief, inspiration and faith for the spirit in humanity coming through.
And,thanks again Claudia for making it all come together here on your blog with kindness and grace
Blessings everyone<3
Blessings to you, as well, Grace.
I loved reading your beautiful, kind words, Grace.