Rain is on the way.  We’ve been warned about a huge storm that will hit over the weekend.  The National Forest people have been mulching the hillsides.  The hope is it will at least slow erosion and runoff.  I talked to a couple of National Forest rangers yesterday and it’s not seed. 

In the past they have seeded burned areas with rye grass which, being non-native, has caused more long term problems (in the form of a greater fire threat) than the short term ones it solved.  So they’re mulching the hillsides instead.  We should get a good test of how that works this weekend.

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The First Surprises 

The recovery after the burn holds one surprise after another.  The first surprise was how quickly the thistles started growing back.  They didn’t even wait for rain.  It only took a few weeks and they were sprouting.

 The second surprise was how quickly the grasses came up with just a couple of inches of rain.  And they’ve been nurtured with additional rain and are growing rapidly and spreading.

With the grasses growing the color combination of the hills was rapidly becoming green and black, not a combination of colors that I found particularly appealing.  The colors looked harsh.  I longed for the more familiar greens and browns typical of Southern California hillsides in spring (at least when we’re not in the midst of a drought year).

Well, as they say, be careful of what you wish (or long) for.  You just might get it.

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There are more hillsides turning green besides the ones behind our house.  Further up Saddleback Mountain there is a growing patch of green.  But it’s not the natural green of tender shoots of new grass.  It’s artificial green.

 It has something to do with the crop dusters that have been flying over the canyons and ridges the past week.  These sturdy little planes have been circling above the mountains and then swooping down, much like the ariel tankers that were diving on the mountains two months ago.  But the material that comes out of this time is not water or the red fire retardant, it’s that same artificial green.

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There are several miracles related to the fire.  One is an apple tree at the stables.  It’s about five feet tall, just a small thing.  But it produces tiny apples every season.  Rumor has it that it was planted by a grieved person who lost a beloved horse.  What better gesture than to plant an apple tree.

So we all had a big question in our minds after the fire, “What happened to the apple tree?  Was it destroyed?”

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The fire really changed an important part of our life in an unexpected way.  We were leasing a horse at the stables not far from our house.  When the fire roared through Monday night it continued on and burned through the stables.  The big wooden barn burned to the ground. 

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The rain this weekend wasn’t as bad as expected.  It was cold by Southern California standards.  But that doesn’t affect runoff.  We were treated to snow and ice atop Santiago Peak (over 5000 ft).  All the radio towers up there glistened in a sheath of ice.  Modjeska Canyon was under mandatory evacuation again due to the fear of mudslides.  But rumor has it that only 30% of the people actually evacuated.  When it was all said and done, there wasn’t much mud on roads this time.  There are signs of minor erosion in the hills behind our house but no gaping chasms.

The 2007 Santiago Fire was about seven weeks ago now.  The fire left the hillsides behind our house bare and covered with ash.  There were two kinds of ash.  There was the black ash that pretty much covered everything.  Then there were patches of white ash where a larger shrub or small tree had once stood.

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