It rained last night. A lot.
When I first started dog walking with Syd, he told me this area would fill with water in the winter. I found it hard to believe in the middle of the summer!
A road, sort of.
Category: Dog walks
There must be a reason.
But of course! 50 meters from the road, leave two red cabinet doors leaning against a tree. Kids? But why?
Burned
After the fires: it will be interesting to revisit this view in a few months. Our guess is that the tree front right will not survive, but that most of the others – because they still have some green needles, even if they don’t look healthy in the photo – might be OK.
When I grow old, I shall
pull a lame dog on a sandy trail in a bicycle trailer. Because why not.
Walking into wildfire – video
Surreal: walking into the wildfire a week ago.
Green returns
After a bit of rain, the patches spared by the recent fire have become greener than ever.
After the fire: strange
It’s fascinating walking our normal dog walk route and noticing the changes – and anomalies – since the fires. Here the plastic part of a broom – in a burned area – is neither charred nor melted, while the wooden handle – extending into an unburned area – is completely burned.
I guess it’s possible someone moved it since the fire two days ago, but we’ve seen no one the last few days, nor any signs of activity other than firefighting in a very few places.
Still smoldering
Monday’s fire persists, but only in a few stumps and with no apparent further danger of spreading.
After the fire
The fire
The dogs were understandably confused yesterday when they encountered something never before seen on the dog walk.
By the end of the walk, we looked back and saw that the brush fire had reached the trees. We were not at all sure we’d have any trees remaining the next morning.
But somehow the fire died down, leaving charred trunks and smoldering stumps today.
The “Boo!” bear stump had already degraded seriously since my photo of it almost three years ago. Not much left of it now.
Some stumps were still aflame. This one has burned underground (note the crater)
Other stumps burned completely, above and below ground, leaving holes.
And strangely, many of the paths we followed were untouched.
Here’s a sapling that was burned in half, but note that the very flammable pine needles nearby were untouched. All in all, very few trees were destroyed.
An ant colony revealed to have been built around branches of a bush.
Overall, a quite surreal experience.
