The Last Picture...

...of what I often called 'The Gnarly Tree'. It stands  stood at the top of our neighbor's field . Oak trees are very common around here and notable (to me anyway) for their very long and very twisty branches. Here, i believe, is the first picture I ever took of it. I sat across the street and tried to paint it, finding out along the way how difficult that was to do. I wound up painting the little red barn on the hill. That burned down too, although the bigger red barn on the same property has survived.

If fire gets into their trunks through the roots the tree will burn for days and then fall over when there is nothing holding it to the ground. That is what happened to the tree  further down in our field which I call the 'Prayer Flag Tree' and almost every single tree on the property next door. Our neighbor is in the process of having those trees cleared right now.

A lot of these trees have stories to tell...I'll try to tell a few of them .

The county cut down all the burned trees that were close to the road, including this one, presumably because they might fall into the road, although we were never told the reason, or even asked for that matter. The problem is that getting rid of the burned logs then becomes the problem of the homeowner. We've decided to leave ours as it is for the time being because we like it. We will have to get a tree company out to look at all our trees to see if they survived the fire, but we have been advised to wait until spring to see if they get new leaves.

We had an appointment today with a consultant to look at our solar battery well situation but he had to cancel because he 'didn't feel well'. Those words take on many ominous possibilities, in the age of Covid, but sometimes it seems like Murphy's Law certainly has applied every step of the way on this project. If we get a new well pump with a 'slow start' it won't pull so many amps on startup that it trips the inverter if there is a power outage. That's the story anyway.

Our son Tim is starting a new job soon (he is an analytical chemist doing environmental studies). We're very pleased for him as he was hating his old job but he was able to commute to work on his bicycle. The new job is in San Ramon, a long way from where he works.

We are negotiating giving him John's car. We have been saying for quite awhile that we practically never need two cars. Now that we don't go anyplace it's just costing a lot of money to keep it. John would like to ride a bike to do his errands but I don't know...it doesn't seem very safe to ride a bike in this town....