A nice gift and fire chat

Not much really went on yesterday, besides work. In the afternoon we had a huge weather change to clouds, thunderstorms, and rain. The electricity kept flickering and went off for a few seconds one time. My side job boss sent me a $200 Visa gift card. That was really nice surprise to receive in the mail. Every year on their company anniversary they have a party for their employees/the day off and give them something, so she sent me the gift card. I'm not sure what I'll spend it on, but I'm sure something will come up. 

Let's chat fireworks and fire for a few minutes. It's no secret I don't like fireworks. I don't much enjoy listening to them, especially for pets, but they are to be expected on July 4th....within reasonable limitations. I complained about the neighbors fireworks last summer. My only comment on my blog this summer on 4th of July was it was pretty quiet and we heard some for a little bit off in the distance when it got dark.

But for the prior summer, let's discuss those limitations

1. We live pretty much smack dab in the middle of a national forest. A Forest - as in flammable trees, underbrush and grasses everywhere surrounding us. We don't live in a city, we don't even live in a town.

2. Just our 2 acre piece of property has at least 100 trees on it (I lost count trying to count). The majority of these are full grown pine or fir trees. That's just our 2 acres. We're surrounded by trees.

3. We don't live where you can call 911 and the fire truck will be here within a few minutes. At a minimum they are 20 minutes. The average time they have told us it takes to get out to a fire in our area is 30 minutes. We live where the nearest volunteer fire department is 10 miles away. We are under no illusions that they will be able to be here in time to put out a fire. The other reality of our all volunteer fire dept is that many of the volunteers work outside of our county (so few jobs here), so those volunteers are not here to respond to a fire during normal work hours. Yes, of course there are some that will be able to respond during weekday work hours, but it's not a full group and it's mostly the older retired guys. A rural volunteer fire dept is not the same thing as taxpayer funded city/town fire departments.

4. July is in the middle of fire season. Last summer it was already a "high" fire danger situation by July. Nearly 1 million acres burned in our state in the summer of 2021, in about 50 separate fires.

5. Mr. Neighbor is an idiot when it comes to fire safety. He's already proven that prior by burning half the grass on his first lot by accident. I left to go see my mom one morning, come back a few hours later and pull into our street and see their lot #1 half black. I was like what in the world?! Go inside the shop to ask dh and he said, ya apparently Mr's little burn brush pile got away from him and he burned half his lot. Also not sure why he always burns on the windiest days, but yet he does.

6. It was not July 4th, it was July 2nd when they lit off all their fireworks (because that was more convenient for their schedule, so we got to listen to them on "their" day and then the normal fireworks on the actual 4th others set off you can hear in the distance)...in the middle of a forest, in the middle of fire season. No one should be stupid enough to think it's ok to let off any fireworks in the middle of a forest in the middle of fire season, but yet, they do.

So ya, we were none to happy about any of it. The potential of stray sparks catching grass, trees and structures on fire is nothing to mess around with when you live where we do. It's the reason our homeowners insurance is so high. It's the reason some insurance companies wouldn't even quote me. Neighbors may want to take a risk like that, we do not. Even if we did want to light off fireworks here at our home, dh would err on the side of caution and just not do it. After all, it's not just us to think about and put in danger.

Not having to deal with any of that, right next door, this past July 4th was a huge relief to us. If we want to go see fireworks we can go to the city to watch their display or go out to a neighboring town park, where they do it safely.

This was the view, standing on the edge of our property in summer of 2017, while earlier that same day we had stood outside talking to state forest officials who were assessing and trying to figure out how they were going to keep that fire from getting to our property and the homes (we didn't have our home yet, but neighbors did) along this road. We just happened to be driving by and saw them parked at our property, so we stopped to talk to them. Those "white" things in the front of this picture, that night, where we were standing...ashes and sparks from the fire, with the potential to still be hot enough to catch something else on fire according to the fire guys we talked to. That's what they were worried about.

So, I could really give a crap less about someone's opinion that I'm selfish and petty because I complain about fireworks. Or maybe educate me on why I'm thinking wrong for the area I live in. My first obligation is to my own home and family and then to that of my neighbors and we would never do anything to risk putting them in danger. Ever. Having fun doesn't mean the same thing where we live compared to living in a city or a place where there's nothing much around you to catch on fire.