An inquisitive old fart with a camera
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.
Monday’s fire persists, but only in a few stumps and with no apparent further danger of spreading.
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.
Strange sky. And a couch abandoned a couple days ago, in plain sight, 50 meters from the road. Because of course.
Voting in Uruguay: you take your credenciál into a school classroom where there are three election workers at a desk and a soldier with an automatic weapon looking at his cell phone. You put your card down in little taped rectangle (thank you COVEEEEED), pull down the obligatory face mask for ID, take an envelope and let them write down the number, go behind a screened-off area where you find tables full of ballots, find the one you want and seal it in the envelope, go back out, tear off the identifying part of the envelope and hand in, then get your proof of voting (which is obligatory for citizens).
How do you figure out who vote for, and what do these ballots with dozens of names mean? That’s for another day.
PS this guy didn’t win
Squash
Yes, that is an avocado I harvested today that weighs 945 grams, or 2 pounds 1.3 ounces.
When we moved to Uruguay in 2009, I planted two avocado trees, which by now are quite large, and producing a bumper crop.
Today we drove a box of them to the organic farm of a German family. We came back with fresh arugula, sweet potatoes, turmeric, leeks, Mandarin oranges, three kinds of squash, and a pomegranate (sweet, we’re promised —the last have been very tart).
I took two avocados (one kilo!) for Syd and his wife. When we returned from the dog walk, there were four fresh-picked grapefruit awaiting me.
From our neighbors behind, we have gotten homemade English muffins, crumpets, and most recently bagels.
I like it!