I apologize for not keeping up with everybody's posts. I do appreciate all the well wishes and sentiments, tho. Things have been really crazy since the fire. We've been trying to decide what to do for weeks. We drove to Wichita Falls TX to see if we wanted to move there, since my niece fled there when her brother told her to come out and live in one of his rentals. She got a job right away and was telling us how cheap it was to live there, etc. So we drove out and looked. But as nice as it was, we just couldn't bring ourselves to move away from the new grandson and his big sister. And we figured it would be a bit of a nightmare to haul all the roses that make it out there.. and then if we decided to come back, we wouldn't be able to bring them back into CA.
We looked at houses here in surrounding areas, but just couldn't commit to anything. We still hadn't gotten our insurance payout. And we'd been hearing nightmare stories about our illustrious town council members trying to make it difficult for lower income people to move back to Paradise. We are middle income, but with inflated prices and supply & demand, we thought we could not afford to rebuild. But after much research, we found a great place up in Redding that builds stick homes for very reasonable, compared to what we'd been hearing locally. We finally got our payout last week, paid off the old mortgage and got the remainder back from the bank so we can now do what we want. Thankfully our home was older and with all the required upgrades, the insurance company gave us a fairly nice extra amount to cover all that. And they told us they would continue to insure us as long as we built on the same lot and did a stick built or modular home. (they had just stopped writing new policies in Paradise a couple yrs ago due to our previous high fire risk)
So to make a very long story short... we are going to rebuild as soon as we get the lot cleaned up. We chose to opt out of the FEMA cleanup, as they take whatever debris removal amount your insurance gives you, plus they are charging approx $80k per lot against the $1.7 billion grant that was given to the town. We are also doing a private pay because I need a few months to dig the roses that have survived out before the cleanup. FEMA comes in whenever they want to. You have no choice with them. So now we can relax a little and wait for the weather to get better and get working on the task at hand.
Today we went up after our trip to Redding to get some work done at the property. My husband was moving the rocks that lined my rose beds and putting them in the backyard so the cleanup crew doesn't plow them under or haul them away. We spent a lot of money on those dang rocks, and we will definitely reuse them! I continued to dig up roses and pot them up. I put them in the enclosed area we built over the leach lines in back. Been reusing soil from the burned out potted roses that didn't make it. It's crazy. I had a couple dozen climbers in 20" plastic pots lining 2 sides of the pen, and it appears that only a couple survived. And much of the soil is just gone from the spot. I dunno if it's because maybe it was a bark or mulch based mix that just burned up, or what. But quite a few of my plastic-potted roses were just gone and the soil level was less than half of what it had been. The fire was so intense it actually vaporized many things... including granite countertops.
Initially thinking all the roses had perished, after our first trip up, I'm now finding that there are more of them surviving than not. I may have prematurely tossed some roses that I thought were gone, that may very well have come back by now. I've found some still in the ground that were pretty "toasty" looking a few wks ago that are suddenly sprouting new growth... FROM the bud union that looked totally dead!! And most of the own roots are coming back. Now with us building a larger house, I will have a bit less room to replant these guys!! Hopefully it will work out ok. I think I need at least two months to get the roses dug out that I need to. Have to clear the path for the crew, plus PG&E will be coming to cut down at least half of our burnt trees, which the roses are all planted around...
I have to shout out a big thank you to one of the Butte Rose Society founding members Julie Matlin for getting me about 300 3-5gal pots. Sounds like a lot, but I will need more if I have to dig out more areas. We'll be going back up tomorrow to do more work if the weather is ok. It had hailed before we went up today, and it was so much the ground was white like snow in lower areas of Paradise. Was kinda weird to see it like that.
....will try to keep you posted on my progress!!