Scorched Earth Policy

We escaped Houston before hurricane Ike struck, thinking we would be smart to get away from all that rain. Little did we know that Ike would sneak up on us in Wimberley. Not the rain, which actually would have been nice. Instead, Ike's strong winds whipped up a burn pile that had been extinguished (or so I thought) the day before, scorching an acre or so of the back side of our property. That's me in the first photo, putting out the last of the flames we were horrified to see after coming back from a trip to Austin.

The second photo is from the top deck, taken the morning after. You can see that the fire stopped where luckily I had recently spread some topsoil near the house. The topsoil, and a little luck, stopped the flames before they could get to the house. Somehow the fire also magically sopped at the edged of the surrounding woods. We lost a couple of trees, but nothing disastrous.

The expression "better lucky than good" certainly seems to apply to this little adventure. In the future I'll endeavor to use more good and not rely on the lucky bit.