Burn, Baby, Burn

Here are a couple of shots, as promised, of the wildfire that was behind our house early last week.  TexDoT has been rebuilding a tired old bridge on this road all summer, and they cleared and burned a wide swath of land for the construction site earlier in the spring.  I whined and moaned at the time because we had trouble with the displaced wildlife, and why did they need to cut so much of the timber, anyway?  Now i am so very grateful because it served as a firebreak between the burning bushes and us.

The green things you see below are no longer green.  Now they are black sticks.  There are still several spots that are still smoldering today.

Didn't get really great pictures because we were doing drive bys, but i think you get the idea.  And for the record, i just wanna say...Let's hear it for our firefighters, and especially those volunteer firefighters.  They are my heroes.  I cannot even imaging battling the kinds of blazes they are dealing with around here, let alone doing it in this heat.

So the fires down the road are out, albeit smoldering, and i get up Saturday morning and head into the kitchen and see THIS out the back door... 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that my heart skipped a beat.  I was instantly panic stricken and went running out the door in my jammies and bare feet.

What would you think if you had been living in fear of wildfire all week long and you saw this before you got your hands on coffee?

You sure as heck wouldn't have expected it to be THIS, now, wouldja?!?!