Wildfire

In case you hadn't caught any of it on the news, the wildfire in the mountains above Boulder is raging out of control, and is now over 7000 acres. I'm honestly surprised this hadn't happened sooner this summer.  There are a lot of dead trees in the forest due to the pine beetle infestation, and it's been an usually dry summer.  Denver has had no rain so far in September, and only about 0.9 inches fell in August.  I think I saw on the news that Fourmile Canyon (where the fire is) has had 0.08 inches of rain since August 15.  No, that's not a typo.

Don't worry, I live quite far away from the fire, and therefore I'm perfectly safe.  Thankfully I think they have gotten everyone evacuated, though thousands of people will probably lose their homes.

I'm always torn when it comes to wildfires.  From one standpoint, it's horrible and tragic for so many people to lose everything they have.  But from another standpoint, we shouldn't be living in these areas in the first place, and forest fires are natural and necessary for healthy growth.  One of the reasons we have the pine beetle problem in the first place (they're native, not invasive) is because the pine trees are so weakened from competition that they were vulnerable to the beetles.  In a natural forest, fires would have been thinning the growth as the forest grew.  Now, since we have prevented ANY fires for so long, the forests are extremely dense, vulnerable to disease, and full of dead trees and unburned leaves, branches, etc.

Ok, rant over. Time to do something with the approximately 30 peaches in my kitchen.  I love Colorado peach season.