Another One of Those Crazy Weekends

It's been one of those crazy, busy weekends that seem to be the new normal around here. Lots of great family time with me going a hundred miles an hour trying to keep up on all the dishes, laundry and cooking. My sister helped me to make nectarine pies for the first time and wowsers, those are the bomb. I discovered that I absolutely adore nectarine pie!

The Eagle Quilt

I managed to work on a little, tiny, bit of  hand quilting here and there, but wanted to show you the applique that got finished up just before the hordes descended. There are over a hundred leaves in the border so it got a little tedious at times, but I love the variety of the fabrics in the fabric print. At first, turning under the seam allowance {and losing that full, larger leaf look}, I started to worry that my leaves were too far apart to look good. Now I can see that it turned out just fine. The berries are not everyone's favorite addition, but personally, I love the little sparks of red.

Another border finished up!

In other news, we have had a very nervy weekend. Much too similar to last years fire experience to sleep well at night. Starting early Friday morning, there was a thunder and lightning storm that started off a bunch of small fires that of course, grew quickly in the high temps we've been experiencing.

Across the river and over the mountain...

The entire county has been on level one evacuation notice with some areas on level three. Oh, it makes us so jumpy. Both of these pictures are taken right here in the town of Pateros. The top pic is from my mom and dads porch and the bottom pic from our own porch later that same night. My mom had to drive past several fires burning directly alongside the highway just to get home that evening and her nerves were totally shot.

Looking in a completely different direction, just over the mountain...

We have not at all been enjoying the feeling of being nearly surrounded by wildfires again, but so far they have not jumped either river that borders our town or directly threatened us. We all have this feeling of impending disaster though which makes it very hard to settle and it doesn't help to know that these same fires have already jumped the Columbia river in two different, more narrow, places downriver.

The town of Chelan however, just 24 miles away, has been experiencing much the same sort of devastation that we faced last year. So scary and heartbreaking for them. It's a much larger town where our oldest daughter works, we do our banking, grocery shopping etc. and do most of the work for our landscaping construction business. Too many wildfires in the state to take care of all of them properly so they are working to save lives and homes first. It's obvious they have made a tremendous effort to save the town of Chelan though and of course, some of us cynically wonder if it helps to have the millions of dollars in tourist money supporting the town to garner the quicker response. Also, two state senators have vacation homes there so I'm sure that helps as well. Not that any of this helps initially {or afterward when faced with lost homes and possessions} as the fires did a crazy amount of damage before they actually started getting brutally serious about trying to stop the inferno from leveling the entire town. 

I think this new way of 'managing' fires instead of trying to put them totally out {at the first sign of fire} is completely out of balance. The wind picks up, changes directions and all of sudden they have huge 'unforeseen' problems. Hopefully with these latest disasters, the state will take a good hard look at communication issues, initial response efforts and fire fighting protocol. There were many, many years during my childhood when wildfires were raging throughout the outlying mountainous areas and never were they allowed to get so out of control that entire towns were at dire risk. And yes, I do know that fire resources get stretched very thin when the amount of fires statewide increase. Okay, off my soapbox and done with my rant! I'm not sure how much quilting I'll get done this week as we all seem to be glued to our phones and computers trying to stay on top of local fire news.