Beyond the Fire Garden

This started out as a quest for a good wide angle shot, but it turned into something else as I looked at the pictures. Blips have a way of doing that. 

In the interests of documenting the changes taking place around us, I concentrated on the view from the fire garden. I've put a couple of pictures in extras for comparison. The top  picture was taken just a few days after the fire, and the bottom one from the same vantage point about three months later. In the interval we decided that we liked the open view and wanted, in any case, to replace the burned wooden one with something metal.

I took the main pictures today, just short of two years later. The top one includes Spike, our best acquisition during the reconstruction phase along with lots of metal garden furniture and many plants. Just in the top left corner the roof of Janet and Paul's house under construction can be seen.

The bottom picture was taken a little further up the hill from where Spike is lying and shows a driveway ending in an empty lot. Before the fire there were so many trees and foliage that we didn't even know that a house was there. We have just learned from the guys who lived across street and moved to San Francisco, that they have rented their house to a young couple from the Midwest who will build a house on that lot.

I used to tell people I was working with who had back problems and other injuries that when they felt discouraged about their process toward recovery they should try to think back to the early days. I think the same is true with recovery from a catastrophic event like the Glass fire. This is probably more information than anybody needs, but it helps me gauge the recovery here and all around us. 

I am grateful to all the people who helped us with the rebuilding and replanting, but most of all I am grateful to the firefighters who must have stood amongst the flames to save our house.