Morning glory

Caroline, our cleaner, arrived at 8:30 this morning which worked out well after a groggy start for us. More about that anon....Caroline does a great job cleaning, and she is a character but can wear one out with her chatter. I think she was happy to have the house to herself as we left for Friday morning coffee almost as soon as she arrived., so she could get on with it without us underfoot.

Our coffee group went to summer schedule, meeting at Cafe Frida which has a lovely garden. It didn't go smoothly however, because Dan and Tobi couldn't make it and Gail didn't get the memo and went to Trail House. She eventually arrived at Cafe Frida with her Trail House coffee. In the meantime John and Bob and I admired the morning glory vine which is growing enthusiastically up an 8 or 10 foot fence and onward up a tree. We revived ourselves with coffee, but I fear it is wearing off now and I'm dozing off as I write.

When we went to bed last night we left the bedroom door open despite the popping and booming of fireworks from somewhere. It was still quite warm outside. I think I read that there would be no official fireworks show this year because of the high fire danger but somebody either didn't get that memo or just decided to ignore it because the popping  and occasional chest rumbling booming went on well into the wee hours.

Just as I was just dropping off to sleep I heard distant sirens followed a few minutes later by the sound of a large truck coming up LosAlamos. It was lighted up like a Christmas tree with flashing red and yellow lights...clearly a fire truck, although it had turned its siren off. John was sound asleep so I got up to investigate, and saw flashing red lights at the bottom of our street followed by four or five more trucks proceeding up the road behind our house. 

I woke John up while I went to check the phone for alerts and he staggered outside in his nightwear underpants to see what he could see which was nothing, except for somewhat increased traffic coming down the hill. After lying awake, staring at the ceiling for awhile, I finally got a message that there was, in fact, a vegetation fire at the very top of Los Alamos road. It was 100% contained. 

The whole thing felt surreal since it was the middle of the night, too dark to see anything except red lights, and the action was accompanied by the distant boom of fireworks. Sleep was a lost cause after all that, but I think I dozed off and on feeling grateful once again for the quick response from Cal Fire. There was still a Cal Fire truck at the end of our street when we drove out this morning and another on its way up from Highway 12.  (extra).