The Built Environment

Torn for choice between a picture that was taken two days ago, and one that was a total cop-out. The house next door hasn't changed a lot since Monday when I took this picture. This is the view from the street. The cement rectangle is the swimming pool perched at the top of a cliff. Before the fire this cliff was covered with California bay laurels, buckeye trees and one or two oaks. We couldn't see the house at all. I think it's a pretty good example of something human made. It demonstrates a lot of thought and planning that has gone into considering the effects of earthquakes (the  foundation piers go all the way down to bedrock...we know, we heard the pile drivers for months) and fire (the lack of open vents, the solid undersides of the eaves, the cement siding). In the beginning we  thought they were figuring it out as they went along.
We still think it is a daft place to build a house and cannot imagine how much it must be costing....

The heat wave goes on. The extra tells the story. It seems that nature is no longer a place of solace and renewal. Mother Nature is well and truly pissed off at us! It's a bit surreal, beginning with all the heavy construction vehicles rumbling up the hill and down our road before 7am. when it is still possible to get a little outdoor work done before it gets too hot. All is quiet by noon when the thermometer has shot up and most of the workers have gone home. The only sound is the CalFire and PG&E helicopters circling just a couple hundred feet above the house checking the power lines and looking for fires in the hills around us.It's hard to know whether to be reassured or alarmed by them, but there is definitely some PTSD involved.  Walking out the door is like walking into a wall of heat. It's unreal.

I wonder if PG&E has noted the dead tree next to the power pole at the corner of our property....

The only sound inside the house is the occasional blaring emergency warnings on the phone from CAL-ISO, the state power regulator and PG&E, the local power provider asking telling ordering us to conserve power and threatening rotating outages. The latest one was so loud it nearly lifted me off my seat and scared the bejeezus out of me. 

I went and turned on the air conditioning. 
It is slightly cooler today but still excessive heat warnings are being issued by the National Weather Service, and It's definitely too hot to spare waste any precious brain cells on the alarming antics of Donald Trump and the numerous investigations swirling around him.

Temperatures are supposed to go down by Friday.