I haven't had a room to plant any of the varieties that you all recommended because I only have a tiny garden and for the past two years volunteers have been growing there. It started with the seeds of a delicious but unknown cherry tomato variety given to me by a local grower. It must have been a hybrid because the one I grew tasted terrible. I pulled it out, but only after some fruit had fallen. The following spring there were several new plants. I pulled out the ones whose fruit didn't taste good and ever since I've had plants that seem well adapted to my growing conditions and produce good cherry tomatoes well into June. The volunteers have stopped producing now, but are still healthy looking.

I have noticed ipe will slowley turn to charcole in a fire then burn up real fast so I am thinking it does make for a hot flame put on a going fire in the wood stove. Several life times ago I had a business installing wood stoves in Oregon, I got called out on repair due to house fire every now and then. It was common to find those old solid steel stoves placed too close to the sheetrock ,always with the same story from the homeowner " well sheetrock dosent burn! the instrustions said so many inches from combustables " and this was true it really wont burn becides the thin paper on the outside. However sheetrock will conduct radiant heat. Depending on how hot that stove was run in a fairley short time the studs behind the sheetrock will trun to charcole. Then its just a matter of time when the right draft comes along and that wall will torch up in a second. To see it more clearley if allum foil is placed behind the stove and allowed to flot on the wall, that is with a small space between it and the sheetrock, that same stove stoked up to red iron in the same home in the same place will not even warm up the sheetrock and have no effect on the wood studs behind at all. It has to do with convection currents air heating up,rising, being replaced with cool air from below. Its the same with a fireplace/hot coals container placed right on the wood deck,or composite,or any decking radiant heat will have a direct conductor. Built up ashes will dampen the radiant heat but the Best protection is Air Space under the fire container. J.

Walt, since I can't see these trees, I can't tell you if the burned branches/branchlets are dead or merely injured. If dead, they will stay dead. If injured, the potential exists-at least from the comfort of my computer chair-for them to recover. Potential does not mean probability. It just means that since I can't personally inspect them, I have to allow for the possibility of survival. I do assume these were lower branches, although since I can't see the trees, and you don't tell us, this may also not be true. But if they are lower branches, and the trees have many more branches above these scorched ones, survival of the tree(s) seems likely. But if the growing tips/buds on those scorched branches were destroyed by the flames, then those branches/branchlets will not re-green. Pines don't have dormant (unseen) buds that can pop after some calamity, the way a maple tree or a willow (or a whole bunch of other broadleaved, deciduous trees) do. So if the growing tip is ruined, that branch is done for. If.....there's that word again....just the needles were consumed by the fire....and if the terminal and side buds are intact, which you may not even be able to ascertain, then that branch should be able to generate new foliage and growth. +oM

Hey, Kim, is that Deuterochonia brevifolia? I got one of those a few years ago at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden (they have extremely reasonable prices), after seeing an old plant of it there, of course. Not hard to grow (I keep mine dry in winter), but not fast -- steady as it goes. Love the bright green flowers and its texture and sculptural character. No such regulations here in Livermore, either for fire resistance or drought tolerance, but the city did offer incentives for people to convert at least part of their lawns to water-thrifty landscape during the last drought, and people are doing that on their own after the last water rate hikes, anyway. As we are only surrounded by semi-arid grassland, for miles, not woodland, forest, or chaparral, I don't think our city would contemplate regulations like that.