FIRE!

We are the luckist people on the planet. We had a fire. Fires really. One on Wenesday and one on Thursday. BH lives on 5 acres surrounded by other acres of houseless property. Every year we have to disk the weeds to keep the fires from going totally out of control. Wednesday the disk guy disked our fields then went on to start a fire just over the hill from us. The disks apparently hit rocks and the sparks started a fire. So yesterday disk guy is disking the fields next to our house when he sets off another fire.

Wednesdays fire was close I thought. I could see the flames at the top of the hill and it would not have taken much to get to the house. There is nothing but dry weeds between the fire and the house. I parked myself on the deck and waited until the firemen completly put it out. BH on the other hand sat in the swing, talking calmly on the phone, conducting business as usual. I am holding myself together while I tell my mommy all about the fire. I tell her BH looks like he could be watching a good movie rather than seeing if the fire will get closer. I hear him on the phone saying 'well I'm not in my office at the moment, there's a fire near the property so I will stay here until they put it out.' Calm I tell you.
Then comes Thursdays fire. We get a call from disk guy and he says theres been a fire at the property, the house is fine but it's burned all around. We haul it home to find these guys in our driveway.This is the driveway from the front door. We had 4 units in our driveway.

See the fireman?

This is the guest house. It is not attached to the main house but it is pretty darn close. It is just on the other side of the driveway. The guest house is on stilts for lack of a better word. It is a one room house built over its own garage. This is the front of the guest house and you can see the pillars that hold up the decking that surround the guest house.

See how the fire burned all the way around the pillars? I'm telling you not one little singe mark on the pillars! Not one!This is the base of the deck that I sat on to watch Wednesdays fire. Thursdays fire came right up to the decking. These are the palm trees. You can see the decking on the bottom just right of the palm trees. The trees sustained some heavy damage. They had a ton of old dried up fronds hanging from the top like they do. Just days ago we were talking about someone going up there to trim it. It is way up there and it would have been expensive. We need not worry about trimming as fire took care of it. Can you imagine what that must have looked like all ablaze? Although the trees are heavily burned I believe they will recover nicely.These are the trees from a different angle. See the electrical wires. As badly burned as the trees are the electrical wires were not touched.

This is the view from our bedroom window. We love to watch the birds take a bath here. The fire came up to the edge of that green strip.

There is a little house at the bottom of this hill. They seemed to be without damage as well. The orchard is just to the left of this pic. All the dried brush around the orchard went up. Two orange trees were singed quite a bit. No real damage, they will recover nicely.
There is a horse corral at the bottom of this hill. There has not been a horse in there for years. These plants are at the bottom of our yard. You can see the grass at the bottom right. That is two badly burned oleander trees. They received heavy burn damage but I still think they will recover. On the right you can see a palm. That is planted on the edge of the grass yard. It is singed on the edges. No real damage there.