Sun has been red for the past few days due to a lot of smoke from many forest fires. Added to that, we had a brush and grass fire that started about a mile from us. One house was theatened, the fire burned all around it. Wind was whipping the flames and scattering pieces of burning brush. The owner has a considerable green belt around the buildings and heilicopters dropped 2000 gallons of water. A man who rents a trailer on an adjoining ranch picked the worst conditions to use his burn barrel. Our local fire conditons have been in the extreme range for about 6 weeks, the temperature was 90, wind at about 30mph, humidity about 10% and he burns trash! Some people shouldn't be allowed to have matches!
The fire took off and spread like a fan. It missed us by half a mile. Every available neighbor, our local volunteer fire department, neighboring towns' fire departments, the Forest Service and BLM were all involved before it was out. Two heilicopters, on their way to another fire with 500 gallon water buckets, saw the fire near the house and diverted to drop their loads on it, then brought another 2 loads within half an hour. One of the ranchers with a large tractor and disc made fire lines. I'm not sure how much they helped, as the wind was scattering burning embers and the state highway didn't stop it. We are all very thankful that it was discovered and put out quickly. It could have been so much worse.
We still haven't had a killing frost. The current air inversion is holding our daytime heating in and giving us nights in the upper 40's. A few leaves have started turning yellow, and the Virginia creeper on our yard fence is bright red! Fall crocus are blooming, gailardia and giant catmint still doing their thing, and everything else seems to be shutting down for the winter. I should be having asters about ready to bloom but I didn't water them enough and they are small. They'll survive.
