Kalanchoe : : Million Mother Plant

Sometimes called Devil's Backbone or one of a wide variety of other names, I'm putting this up for Tiny Tuesday because each tiny plantlet falls off, roots and forms another plant. Nature is endlessly fascinating.

I feel that the predicted lightning that never arrived was a turning point in starting to get the fires under control. The fact that they were a result of the joining of hundreds of lightning strike fires meant that they are also monsters. The fires closest to us, known as the LNU Lightning  Complex, which include the Hennessey fire to the east of us, and the Wallbridge fire to the north, cover 352,913 acres and are 27% contained. 

The air quality is better too. That seems to be more a function of the wind direction than the proximity of the fires, but the smoke is oppressive and depressing.

The firefighters fight these fires more with shovels and bulldozers, pickaxes and fire itself in the form of backfires, than they do with water. Large portions of these fires are in heavily forested backcountry which hasn't burned in 50 years. and doesn't have handy water faucets. It is hot, dirty exhausting work...The fire captains perform a kind of triage deciding what to let burn and where to put in fire lines to protect life and property. Before reinforcements arrived, some of them worked as much as 96 hours straight. They are finally able to go on a 'normal' 24 hours on/24 hours off schedule. 

There will be many stories of the heroism and strength of these firefighters...and some of them are women. A 62 year old volunteer from Occidental and his 19 year old daughter have been working together and making headlines for two years, but heroes doesn't even begin to describe them, or the place they occupy in my heart for the work they do to protect us and our homes.