Another Sunflower Picture

MY camera didn't fully capture the scene but this is our neighbors' foundation with the steps leading up to the place where their front door once was.Their house burned down, and they were very lucky to be able to keep this foundation because they plan to rebuild and not having to redo their rather precarious foundation will definitely give them a head start. They are living at least part time in the RV in the lower left of the picture.

I don't know if they planted the sunflowers or if they came from our bird feeder but they are a cheerful sight in front of what was once a pretty depressing scene. Theirs  was one of the first lots to be cleared in the neighborhood. It is just below Dorie's which is more adjacent to ours and  the one we see straight out of our kitchen. I have seen sunflowers in cleared lots all over the neighborhood. 

Another heartening sign of regeneration are the houses that are actually beginning to be rebuillt. The first extra shows the lot as it looked two months after the fire and the second one is a picture I snapped from the car as we were driving past the same lot today. It was fascinating to watch them lowering the roof trusses into place, but as I was in the middle of the street and we were on the way to our appointment with Kathy we had to move along.

I know from experience what a long process rebuilding can be, filled with many delays, cost overruns (the price of wood has gone up many times since 2017) code changes and frustrations, but at least things are going in the right direction.

We had a long discussion about how long we want to stay in this house, but there are so many imponderables about that simple question that we decided to go with the present and the fact that we don't want to move and do what we can to protect our house from fire, get help with the garden in the areas that are no longer accessible and take it one day at a time.

I think I finally figured out a way to expand our bedroom, closet, master bath so that we could have a bathtub but I think that is already getting ahead of ourselves....