more fire on the ridge

A fire started near Martin Road in Bonny Doon yesterday around three in the afternoon. By four, they had begun evacuating the residents (1400 or so of them: this is an area often referred to as "rural Bonny Doon," though its social characteristics are rather more suburban).

This is not to mention the fire down at Hunter-Ligget military reservation, which is at the southern end of Monterey County. The thing is, within Santa Cruz County we don't usually get as much fire as the rest of the less-urban parts of the state, a fact I attribute to fog and redwood trees (which is sort of a tautology). The rain year was not that dry, but the spring was dryer than dry: it's the second dryish year: and there's a lot of tinder in those mountains, partly because of the many wet years we had before that, meaning a lot of growth and few little fires to control it, and also because there are a lot of dead trees standing around because of sudden oak death disease and pine pitch canker the last few years.

So you get a bad fire year.

On another front, I have successfully printed lovely little magnets with pictures of babies, for father's day presents. On still another front, the pilot batch of dried apricot wafers is transcendently beautiful and tasty.