05/25/2026
If a bumblebee and Indiana Jones had a baby, it would look like ME in my wildfire evacuation outfit! 🤣 🐝 Per the fire chief at last week’s meeting, we need to be prepared to evacuate on foot, with only 10 minutes notice, during an ember storm (with sparks falling down and a dark sky even in the middle of the day). I remember one day years ago when a guy flipped off 🖕🏻my husband and I as we drove home with a Christmas tree strapped to the top of our 4Runner. We had cut the tree down in the forest, according to all the forest ranger’s rules, after buying a permit to do so, as a very important part of fire mitigation in our area. Unfortunately, with the severe drought we have this year, the trees aren’t getting enough moisture to produce the sap needed to push out the mountain pine beetles. The beetles are receiving distress signals from the trees, which lures them in for infestation, thus killing the tree and creating extreme wildfire danger in our area! It is expensive to live in the mountains these days; people are spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to have infested trees cut down (and put into a woodchipper or covered in plastic) before the beetles start flying in June to infest more trees. Homeowners are also spending hundreds of dollars to staple pheromone packets to healthy trees, or getting them injected with pheromones, or spraying with pesticides (which I’m not a fan of because it kills cats, bees, etc.) We (and most of our neighbors) will be stapling our pheromone packets to trees in the next few days. We only had to have 4 trees cut down today (3 infested, and 1 already dead) for $1000. Our next door neighbor has 20-30 trees that need to come down by mid-June before the beetles fly. 😳 We are on the waiting list for the fire department to come haul our slash (dead branches and hopefully tree trunks) for free. 😊I spent all day hauling our slash uphill into big piles, per the fire station’s request. 🥵 Tomorrow I plan to call the electric company to have them cut down branches (or trees) touching the power lines at the back of our property. We love living in the mountains but it’s not always easy to do so!
