Giveaway For Reaching 100 Subscribers on my You Tube Channel!

Woohoo! I've reached a great milestone and want to say thanks to all of you for an awesome beginning!  To celebrate, I am having a little give away. :-)   To Enter: Subscribe to my "Pecan Corner" You Tube channel, then comment on You Tube on this video (click through to watch it on You Tube, then you can see the comment box) answering this question: "What are the best kind of gifts for celebration give-a-ways from individual channels?"

Must comment on You Tube before Midnight Saturday night, January 24th 2015. Winners will be announced on Monday Jan 26th 2015. Winners must message me within 48 hours (by mid-day Wed the 28th) with their mailing address and their choice of prize. Thanks a bunch!!!

Healing the Burns: References For Wildfire & Drought Recovery Plantings

Every landscape contains some plants that will not grow unless they have gone through fire. These seed lay dormant, awaiting their call to action - awaiting the moment God created them for - and burst into life on burnt ground in due time.

But some locations, such as steep slopes that burned with a kiln-hot blaze, may need a little help. Especially, those prone to erosion may benefit from an extra supply of native grasses (pdf link here) mirroring those in place before the burn, so that the root systems can hold the soil in place.

One of Texas' native plant suppliers, "Native American Seed"aka SeedSource.com, has created a Wildfire Reference Guide that provides information, links to resources, tips and seed recommendations.  This company has loads of information about effective use of native grasses in landscaping and in prairie restoration.

Another excellent website is "Firewise", sponsored by the National Fire Protection Association. Lots and lots of information, not only for professionals, but also excellent resources for homeowners. One full page is dedicated to tips for wildfire readiness & evacuation. Another shares plant lists provided by various State Extension Services.

The NFPA's preparedness efforts include "Ready, Set, Go!" Most of these readiness habits are important for any emergency evacuation, so it's worth reading even if you don't live in a wildfire-prone area.
 
We're "not out of the woods yet", but the future calls. Time to get to work on a Texas landscape that's on the mend, that will overcome the continuing drought. Although this drought that affects the entire states of Texas & Oklahoma, much of New Mexico, and even part of Louisiana,  is not expected to end for another year, the Good Lord sends us rain to tide us over until the fullness of time in this natural cycle.

So now, in time for fall and winter moisture, is a good time for scattering locally-native wild seed.

We have not had major fires in our area this year. Our ecology suffers from the lack of moisture, heat and dehydration. As the rest of my St Augustine lawn dies under heavy water rationing, as have 2 mature apricot trees, a young apple tree, three young grapes, asparagus, herbs, and several perennials, I'm starting to think how to reconstruct our yard once the drought ends. And what I'm thinking is wild.

In addition to the resources mentioned above, the always-remarkable Texas Parks & Wildlife department has a great program for increasing our backyard & urban habitats called "Texas Wildscapes".

Last but not in any way least, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has a Drought Resource Center that is especially inspiring and hope-filling right now.

The one nice thing about this summer has been not having to mow - normally a 3-hour-a-week job. What if, when I put out those new fruit trees on our extra lot,  instead of being blanketed with grass that has to be cut, they were surrounded by permanent paths and un-mown, non-irrigated patches of native meadow and lovely wildflowers, like these from our visit to the Lady Bird Johnston Wildflower Center in Austin:

That could be an unexpected blessing indeed!


P.S. Tuesday, Oct 4th, is when Texas hosts National Night Out, and in our town, with no police force, our local Volunteer Fire Department is having open house - yours probably is, too. Drive over to the fire station and visit, shake  hands with these uncommon young men in your community. Chances are they've spent many hours fighting or preventing fires this summer.

And So it Goes in Shreveport: "Priorities"

Pat Austin proves once again just what an awesome blogger she is with her post about Governor Perry's response to the Texas wild fires that are raging across the beautiful, native, Texas Hill Country; raging through the gracious Pineywoods into Louisiana and into Arkansas, raging through the Post Oak belt that runs all the way up into Oklahoma (which is suffering too), raging through the prairies where the Red Wing Blackbirds fly.

Go over to And So It Goes in Shreveport, and see the terrifying pictures Pat has put up to give you just an inkling of what is happening to our state.  God bless our governor for having his priorities in order: lives come before politics, before money, before anything else.

God bless Texas.

Trying To Fight It: 62 New Fires, 2 Dead, 500+ Homes Burned Since Yesterday

 (Photo a reader-submited picture by@calebthefox via Twitter to the Austin Statesman Reader Wildfire Photos Gallery: http://galleries.statesman.com/gallery/reader-wildfire-photos/#217883) Sunday, September 4, 2011 (updated on 9/05/2011 at 6:15 p.m.) 

Merv at Prairie Pundit, reports that Governor Perry returned to Texas because of the terrible fires that have burned more than 500 homes and killed two since yesterday, forcing him to cancel his plans to take part in the DeMint Palmetto Freedom Forum.

[9/6/11 Update: Losses have climbed to at least 1,000 homes burned to the ground as of this morning.  And the fire still burns.]

While Texas has fought fires constantly all summer, major fires that erupted yesterday in Travis & Bastrop Counties are threatening Austin's environs - Bastrop is commuting distance from Austin, as are Cedar Park, Spicewood Springs, and other areas being discussed in news reports. This is the heart of "the Hill Country" of fame and legend. In East Texas,  fires caused the deaths of two people yesterday.
 
Here is a link to Austin Statesman Reader Photos of the fires.  There are some really terrifying shots among these - and some that make very clear how dire the situation is. 

The Texas Forest Service updates can be found here. This page is usually updated each night, to reflect the previous day's information.

Links to information & a video about the massive blazes known as "fire storms" can be found at Texasfirestorm.org. 

Here is a link to a Wild Fire Map (via About.com) from the USDA Active Fire Mapping Program that is updated regularly to show wildfires for the whole United States. As you can see at the time of posting, Texas is on fire.

The InciWeb Fact Sheet on Texas Wild Fires can be found here. The stats updated as of half an hour ago include these sobering numbers:

Total fires in Texas since Nov. 15, 2010: 20,906

Total acres burned in Texas since Nov. 15, 2010: 3,601,775

(exceeds previous record of 2,105,361 acres set in 2005-2006)

Fires in Texas in 2011: 18,887

Fires nationally in 2011: 55,477

Proportion of total national fires in 2011 that have occurred in Texas: 34 percent

Acres burned in Texas in 2011: 3,538,852

Acres burned nationally in 2011: 7,213,113

Proportion of total national acres that have burned in Texas: 49 percent

Ten-year U.S. national average acres burned: 5,863,193 acres/year

Six of the 10 largest wildfires in Texas history occurred in 2011.

Total Aviation Hours: 13,577.05 (As of 9/5/11)

Total aviation drops: 40,950

Gallons of fire retardant dropped: 4,856,080

Gallons of water dropped: 20,851,869

Most flight hours recorded in a single day: 238.39 (20 June 2011)

Most gallons of water and retardant dropped in a single day: 1,188,883 (1 Sept 2011)

(Note: All air operation figures are from 21 Dec. 2010, when record-keeping began.)

Texas counties where Texas Forest Service has fought wildfires: 199 of 254

Homes and structures saved since November 15, 2010: 45,359

Homes saved: 29,055

Homes and structures lost since November 15, 2010: 3,523

Homes lost: 1,091

Record number of homes lost in Texas history on a single fire: 476 homes lost on the Bastrop County Complex Fire on Sept. 4 and 5, 2011.

Texas Wildfires Are Still Burning.

Tuesday May 24 2011 UPDATE: Breaking news of out-of-control range fires today in the Permian Basin area of West Texas: Midland, Andrews, Coahoma, Stanton areas. There were evacuations and road closings in North Midland today, with homes and several hotels evacuated, including the Marriotts, Sleep Inn and Residence Inn. Those needing shelter are being put up at the Horseshoe Arena and at Stonegate Fellowship Church on Wadley - I'm sure other churches have opened their doors as well. 
There's a live news feed on KWES's site with continual updates.

An Andrews County wild fire has burned more than 14,000 acres, is not contained, and is moving toward Martin County (Stanton). It is being referred to as "the Derrick Fire" and CBS7 has a continually updated report with photos here.    A separate fire, called  "the CEED Fire" was 6 1/2 miles long and a mile wide.

For continual information on the situation with Texas fires,  see the links in this post to the Texas Forest Service's site: "Governor Perry isn't the only one praying". 

Please pray for rain - we could use a couple of hurricanes - and for the winds to die down. They say this is the worst drought in the 117 years they've been tracking precipitation for the state.

Here's another good article (article is better than the goofy title) on WEAA that explains why the damage caused by these range fires and the drought will reach far beyond Texas and the people immediately in the path of the inferno.

_____

Original post Tuesday, May 10, 2011:

These photos  of a new range fire were taken by my friend in far South West Texas near Alpine. It started Sunday, and the pictures were taken from her porch. The beautiful, clean mountain air is as tainted as that in California cities - but in Alpine, this is smoke from a raging wild fire, not smog from a million commuting cars.

 Where I am, in Central Texas, there are small fires each few days that are so far under control. We also passed a burned area last weekend that looked like a back-burn to protect a house in event of flames running at it.

 There has been a little rain, sporatic, and spotty. We got a little rain Easter, and a little more the next day with hail of mixed size, up to golf ball size, about 2 inches across, and last Sunday we got about an inch and a half. Not enough to make the green grass grow or moisten the ground so that a fire can't catch hold.

This state has seen 135 new fires just in the past week - the map doesn't look much different than the one three weeks ago.  From my area all the way down to Austin, all around out West, all up in the Panhandle near Lubbock, over into Deep East Texas, the Piney Woods and the National Forests: all of Texas' wild areas, grasslands and woods are still suffering from deep drought and the resulting range fires.      


Did our President look out the window when Air Force One passed over the many fires and burned areas the flight path crossed on his way to El Paso to ask Texans for money for his reelection campaign?


Or will he continue to approach Texas the same way his administration gives out tickets for White House Tours?

I'm proud of our Governor for putting his integrity and the interests of the people of the State of Texas first. He tried to reach out to President Obama long ago on the tarmac and was snubbed for his trouble.

Governor Perry tried to reach out again when  Tropical Storm Hermine ravaged 40 counties - most of them inland - in our state. Then as now, the Salvation Army came through    but the Obama Administration did not.

He has tried to reach out when the Obama Administration rejected his request for help fighting these fires, and was derided for seeking help.

Governor Perry is no fool. He will not play Charlie Brown to Obama's (or Valerie Jarrett's?) Lucy.

Governor Perry Isn't the Only One Praying

At least two volunteer firefighters have lost their lives already. Whole towns have been evacuated. More than 400 homes have burned. And the wildfires in Texas, driven by continual high winds through a drought-stricken prairie landscape, show no signs of abating.

So, yes, we absolutely need prayer and are grateful to Governor Perry for his call for prayers on the next three days : Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, to ask God for rain.

We've all been praying for rain for weeks. Where there aren't fires, the cattle need water... it gets worse: people need water. Some lake-side folks whose water comes from small, individual reservoirs (ponds/creeks) are having to haul water in for their home use.  At work, we receive daily updates on the critical condition and are prepared for evacuation if necessary. The dangers of fires that not only can burn the length of a football field in less than a single minute but that can turn into the inferno known as a "Fire Storm" is real and immediate.

The UK's Daily Mail has had the best coverage of the fires ( I guess most of the US media thinks it is just "local news" since the fires aren't on the West Coast).  A down-under paper, The Australian, has a fine and compassionate article as well. And Fox, of course, carried reliable coverage.

There's also excellent information on the Texas Forest Service's Inter-Agency Coordination Center site,  and on the Texas Forest Service's own main website. 

It was a challenge to find news articles about this that were not sneering and turning this into some political event:

Some guy at The Atlantic Wire had this to say " It's worth noting that a few days ago, Perry asked the federal government for help in fighting the wildfires. So it's not like a public call to prayer was his go-to here. Then again, is it the logical next step? The period he's outlining does fall between Good Friday and Easter Sunday--so it seems like if a miracle is going to take place, that would be the time for it. That may not offer solace to those troubled by the movement along the church/state line, though. We hope that rain and relief do come to Texas, however it happens."

Not only civil, but gracious, too. 

And Reuters couldn't resist a political dig in the 3 lines it deigned to give the thousands of people impacted by these fires. 1.5 million acres scorched, more than 250 individual fires stretching across a state bigger than any but Alaska, but Reuters wanted to be sure its readers knew that "Perry, a Republican, sought increased federal help in combating the blazes last weekend and urged Texans to ask the same from a higher power over the Easter holiday weekend."

 Thank you Governor Perry, for this proclamation. It shows that you are still able to see what all of us in Texas are already doing. We appreciate your willingness to do the right thing.

The media and the entrenched elites are still doing to Texas what they did during the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1974, what they did during the 1980's Oil Bust, what they did after Hurricane Ike: pointing and laughing.

In today's world, where the pictures and stories are instantly available worldwide, you'd think they'd have a little more human decency.  I guess that is another one of those rare-earth-minerals that only the Salt of the Earth still have in abundance.

[September 6, 2011 UPDATE: Here's the latest post on the fires that have burned 1,000 homes in the past week, and links to new information: Trying To Fight It: 62 New Fires, 2 Dead, 500+ Homes Burned Since Yesterday]