Fig Tree

I haven't been what day it is for weeks and now I don't even know what season it is...other than fire season. Usually fire season comes in September or late September or October when the autumn winds blow. when the hot Diablo winds blow. But this year it came early with a rare dry lightning storm in the middle of August which started so fires in tinder dry California that they they joined together. Instead of being named for the places where they started, Cal Fire just lumped them together in huge areas with names like  LNU Lightning Complex fire. There were so many fires burning that there weren't nearly enough firefighters to fight them all. Reinforcements have been arriving ever since from all over.

As new fires started all over the state, the smoke, held down by an unseasonal marine layer, overwhelmed the sky with an eerie Mars-like red. The noontime sunset sky has been replaced by a thick pall of unhealthy toxic smoke. We are inside again because it is not safe to breathe outside. The only consolation is that the smoke is helping the fire fighters by lowering the temperature. We are nevertheless longing for some kind of ocean breeze to blow it away. 

The fig tree is losing it's leaves. I'm not sure if that is because of the extreme heat, the toxic smoke, the lack of water during the power shutdown or simply the fact that it is autumn. It is full of ripening figs....

We did the final test on the solar battery/inverter/rewired well pump today and there was absolutely no change. The whole system failed when the well pump went on. Clearly the inverter is faulty. John has told Ali that we are finished. We can't take any more.He needs to contact the inverter company and get it corrected or take it all out and give us our money back. We don't want to get lawyers involved, but we may have to. 

Although we find ourselves  back at square one, it is almost a relief to have washed our hands of the whole thing....