87 was re-opened yesterday. They sent out a huge contingency of hot spot firefighters, air craft and whatever else and had that fire put out quickly.  Drove by it on the way home, I have no clue how it started, but since it was directly on the side of the road, I assume some dingbat threw a cigarette out a car window or something similar.

Well anyway, 5 days off coming to a close, the reality of work and heat back in my face coming soon.  I could take 2 weeks off right now and still not feel like it was enough.  I intend on taking more time off next month.

The dead Sissoo tree.  By all rights that tree was dead.  All of it's leaves were crispy brown.  It was a "victim" of the drip system not working.  I fixed the drip system and spent 2 weeks watering the heck out of that tree.  I figured to give it a try before chopping it down.

My hope was based on the winter 2 years ago where the freeze was so bad, every single Sissoo tree on my property (I have something like 20 of them that I planted as saplings)  appeared dead.  There was NOTHING on those trees.  After watering and watering, every single one of them came back.

Well, happy to say that this tree?  Is covered with fresh, new buds.  It is putting out leaves all over the entire tree.  I caught the problem, apparently, before the roots died.  This tree was growing very nicely before this problem is why I was really going to be a bit sad to see it go.  It's about 10 feet tall at this point.

"Neighbors" - if you can call them that - behind me were out there yesterday and this morning - while I was up at the mountains - cleaning up the cat poop.  I dunno yet if they got it all up or not.  Monday the Neighborhood Services department is coming out, but I am putting more hope on the city's Zoning department inspector.

It's kind of hard to believe some of the temperatures being recorded in places in this country that really shouldn't be getting that hot.,  I wonder how people in those areas that don't have AC deal with it.  I would be going out and buying a window AC unit - at the very least - to keep at least one room cool in the house.  We live in extreme heat, but we expect it and are pretty well ready for it when it comes.  Some folks are stuck with evap coolers - which will not keep a house cool in the hot summer.  It will cool it down about 20 or maybe a bit more degrees, but it isn't going to be 70 in your house.  On a 115 degree day, it will probably be in the low to mid 90's inside a house with only evap cooling.  The advantage of evaporative coolers is they are cheap to run and definitely better than nothing.

Well, nothing to do but pray that cooling comes to those areas and comes quickly. If we could only just fast-forward to October....................