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  • From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Re: How To - maybe not ....
  • Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 06:43:22 -0800

At 11/1/2004, you wrote:
As for matches ? Tell that to all the folks whose homes have been torched by kids playing with 'em - and the kids that have died in those fires ... Bad day here today - I wanted to finish painting outside - but it's raining. Again.

Try buying strike anywhere matches.

I fought a fire on my property last year while my son's house was burning. The fire here was started by some kids on the reservation having a drunken party and lighting a fire. The police have a very good idea who did it but the reservation is not being very cooperative. Three people died in that fire and about 300 homes lost. An idiot hunter started the fire that burned my sons place. HE was out for less than 8 hours, was lost, dehydrated, delirious, and started a signal fire in dense brush in high winds. 19 people died in that fire and 0ver 2000 homes lost. The hunter was charged about a month ago.

Back to invasive or weed plants, they are related tot he fires. Grasses are very invasive and provide a very fuel rich understory. Some imported plants escape and naturalize and provide a much hotter fire, killing the local fire adopted species. Most native plants are designed to burn after about 20 years. Invasive species are usually not fire adopted so will burn much more easily. The native plants do not recover, leaving more room for invasive plants.

After the fires all you could hear was how the environmentalists had prevented burn offs. As is much of the right wing rhetoric it was wrong. There were two major reasons for not burning off excessive brush. One was the owners in high end housing developments would drag out lawyers every time someone wanted to burn off non native plants or cut down oil rich eucalyptus. Another reason was the budget cuts imposed by the state. Budget cuts imposed by tax cuts supported by high income people in expensive housing developments.

The California Native Plant Society is a good source of information. Many plants are weed plants here because so much was imported. Ivy is one of the worst but there are others such as Salt Cedar or Tamarisk. Moves are being made to restrict the sale of many of the more invasive weed species. These moves have hard going because people want the place to look like Boston and it is above all else a desert here.

Don Bowen
Awl Knotted Up Woodworking
Valley Center, CA http://www.braingarage.com






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