Wind and Fire

(WARNING--Lots of pictures.)

It has been quite awhile since I have posted.  It is not that we are not doing anything, it is mostly that our activities are not particularly exciting...at least until this past weekend.  More on that in a moment.

So what is our normal routine and what counts as "excitement" in our otherwise boring world?  Here are some examples of our normal things.

Backyard bird feeders.  The Frog feeds the backyard birds daily and we make sure they have clean water in the birdbath.  We have been guests to a full compliment of birds this spring:  white winged doves, blue jays, cardinals, finches, downy woodpeckers, red bellied woodpeckers, brown thrashers, wrens, and occasional eastern starlings and sparrows.  There are also mockingbirds, robins, kites and hawks around, but they are not on the bird feeders.  One moment of excitement was a new bird we spotted on the feeder this spring, a red-headed woodpecker.  He was only around for 2-3 days and was gone.  It was still exciting to see something new.

Red-headed woodpecker--a first for us

Actually, it is not uncommon to see unusual birds as they pass through, but it is still always a surprise.  Much earlier this spring we looked out to see a black vulture sitting on the back fence.  We have no idea what he was doing since there was nothing dead around and could only surmise he lost contact with his buddies as they migrated through.  (They are only here in the summer.)

Black vulture sitting on our back fence.

Spring also always seems to bring a new batch of young squirrels that have to learn the hard way that they cannot access the food in the feeders.  Being young and athletic, they try anyway.

We did end up moving the feeder this weekend since the squirrels were also jumping into the Japanese maple tree, the small tree/bush in the foreground with the thin yellowy green leaves, on their way to and from the feeder.  Their rough landings were breaking off the branches.   Squirrels are definitely problem rodents.

Vegetable garden.  The garden is doing fine.  We have had lots of green beans, lettuce, kale and tomatoes.  I will probably pick the first banana peppers this week.  The biggest "excitement" has been figuring out how to address the fungus attacking the tomato plant due to all of our rain or figuring out why the baby cucumbers are shriveling and dying...presumably due to lack of pollination because there are no bees around this year.  What has happened to the bees?

Lettuce in the middle is getting leggy but has still not bolted despite being June.  That is likely due to the cool wet weather so far this spring.

Banana peppers being crowded out by the bush beans on the left and the kale in the background.  Also visible are a few green tomatoes on the right.

LELLA activities.  Lake Park has been closed for weeks and hence not available for walking due to high lake levels.  The Army Corps of Engineers is releasing a large amount of water in hopes of bringing the lake level down, but that means many of the trails at LLELA are under water and not available for hiking either.  We hike when we can on the trails that are still open.

We do continue volunteering one Saturday morning a month in the Visitor's Center at LLELA and feed the turtles once a week at LLELA, part of the turtle project I posted about in January.

Three of the baby turtles looking at the June bug we had just thrown into the pen

We have been trying to avoid the drama surrounding what to feed the turtles.  We don't need that excitement.  We did spend one entire morning last week going to area Walmart stores and talking to their produce workers until we found fresh cut napolitos for the turtles, something I had never shopped for before.  I know, the excitement never ends.

Real excitement hits this weekend.  We were blissfully muddling along until some real excitement hit this weekend.  Fortunately we were spectators at best for most of this.

Fire in the neighborhood.  I was in the shower Friday evening about 8 when I heard a siren and what sounded like a fire truck out front.  I told the Frog to see what was going on.  He came back immediately and said to get dressed.  He could not tell where it was coming from, but he could see heavy smoke filling the street when looking out the front window.

It was quickly obvious that the house across the street was on fire due to smoke pouring out of the roof and around the eaves, although I never saw flames from the front. 

 

Below is a short film clip of what I saw from our front yard when I first came out. 

First responders from Lewisville, Highland Village, and Flower Mound were quickly on the scene. Not visible from here was at least one ambulance around the corner.

According to the policeman that had the traffic blocked just south of our house, an electric fire started in the garage and spread to the attic.  The garage opens to the back, so we could not see the garage.  They obviously were using fire hoses through the front door.  The policeman said the firemen were also pulling drywall from the ceiling. 

Fortunately the fire was extinguished fairly quickly, although it continued to smoke for some time.  Best of all, the guy that lives in the house got out safely.

Since this was our first time so close to a fire, it was interesting to see some of the details.

The Lewisville Fire Department put up a drone early on in the process and left it up throughout the event.

Fire department drone over the fire

The fire fighters had a number of chain saws which we think they used to cut into the roof.

Chain saws and other gear spread out on the front lawn.

Even well after the fire was apparently out we could see fire fighters on the roof.

Firemen on the roof as seen from the front

It was interesting to see what they did to pack up their equipment.  They drained the hoses, squeeged them, them folded them into a box for carrying back to the truck.

Packing the hose into the carrying box

I saw a fireman near the utility connections relatively early in the event.  I thought he was likely turning off the gas but later realized when looking at pictures that he was also pulling the electric meter.  Near the end of the clean up a worker completely disconnected and removed the gas meter.

Removing the gas meter

The first fire trucks arrived a few minutes after 8.  The last fire trucks and the police were gone a few minutes after 10.  Other than a piece of plywood over one of the windows beside the front door (and the lack of an electric meter or gas meter), it was impossible to tell the next morning from the front of the house that anything had happened.

Wind storm.  Clearly the fire was more than enough excitement for us for one weekend, but there was one other event yet to come--a major wind storm blew through the metroplex a little after noon on Sunday.  We watched the trees blow in the ferocious winds (later reported to be 64 mph in Lewisville), but we did not think much about it.  A few minutes later our power went out.  I quickly found online (my iPhone is great!)  that almost all of Lewisville was without power due to lines down.  Fortunately this turned out to be a non-event for us.  It was now cool outside and our power came back on after about 90 minutes. 

Little did we know until the tv news that night of the devastating destruction throughout the metroplex.  Over 300,000 customers were without power, many many trees were down, power lines were down everywhere, windows were blown out, and at least one person had been killed in a crane collapse in downtown Dallas.  Last night, more than two days after the storm, there were still 100,000 customers without power.  That number is down to about 30,000 this morning.

Impact of storm on LLELA.  We did go out to LLELA the next morning to assess damage there.  We still couldn't get along the river due to the large outflow from the dam but we could see from the other part of the loop there were multiple huge trees down now over the trail along the river.  They had already had there roots undercut by the high river flow earlier this year and the winds were the last straw that pushed them over.  That is going to be a major problem, but cannot be attacked until the river levels go down.

Continuing on down the trail through the woods, there were lots of limbs and small branches down.  We could push most of those to the side (our small contribution to trail maintenance.)  However, we encountered a much bigger downed tree on the south side of the marsh which we reported. 

Yes, the Frog is standing on the trail.  No, we can't push this mess to the side.

Another picture of the trees over the trail

I also almost stepped on a wasp nest when trying to bushwhack around this mess.  The nest had been in the tree but was now essentially on the ground.  These paper wasps are usually pretty docile but are known to aggressively defend their nest.  For that reason I did a rapid retreat and decided we had gone far enough for one day.

The wasps that I almost stepped on when trying to bushwhack around the fallen trees.

Unfortunately, these downed trees mean the trail is now closed and may remain closed for quite some time since access is so limited due to the other problems.  It is a very minor problem compared to the major problems throughout the metroplex, but it still will be interesting (although hopefully not too exciting) to see how it gets resolved over the coming months.