Carol, You know, we lived here for about 5 years before I saw a single pasture fire that burned more than a small (maybe front yard-sized) amount of land and a couple of bales of hay. I guess those must have been good rain years, because since 2005 the wildfires have been unbelievable. I was out before sunrise setting up and turning on sprinklers, and pruning up limbs on a couple of small trees. (Part of firescaping is that all limbs be pruned up 8' above the ground so fire cannot climb up into their canopy. It is hard to do this on very small young trees that are only 8' or 10' tall themselves.) Later today, I will cut back the cannas near the house all the way down to the ground. Then, I am going to cut back all the half-frozen (top half froze, botton half didn't) four o'clocks on the north and northeast sides of the house and the ones under the pecan trees too. I'll spend the rest of the day cutting pasture grass and weedeating fencelines, edges where the forest meets the grassland, and the bar ditches. I'd rather cut it now than risk having it burn later. I was walking the dog Saturday and noticed our trees are about as colorful and lovely as they get here in southern OK, but my neighbor's pastures are that dry, tawny-gold wheat color and I am hoping they will cut down all that dry grass before it burns. If we learned anything here at all these last few years, it is that tall dry grass burns a gazillion times faster than very short grass. I think all of today and tomorrow will be just doing yard maintenance and clean-up, but maybe by Wed. I can get into the fenced garden and clean it out. I still have snakes in there, though, so I'd like to do that on a colder day. I do need to clean up all my containers as well, removing the dead foliage and putting it on the compost pile, and stacking up the pots for the winter. The white squirrels in Texas make the news every now and then. They have a couple of them on the campus of the University of North Texas at Denton and they cause quite a commotion on campus. The students feed them, take their pictures, etc. They even have a calendar of photos of "their" white squirrels that they sell to raise money for something on campus....maybe the library. Some years they have only 1 and other years there are 2 or 3. When one of the white squirrels was found dead a few years ago, they had a funeral or memorial service for it. I guess it gives the college students something unusual to be interested in while there at school. All of our squirrels here in Love County are just run-of-the-mill squirrels--no exotic white ones! I have a small tomato plant--maybe 8" tall--in one container on the garage/barn's concrete slab. It must have reseeded from a cherry tomato growing in a larger pot nearby. I thought it would freeze when everything else did, but there it sits, lovely and green, though not blooming. At times I am tempted to put it into a larger pot and try to keep it through the winter, but I know from experience that winter tomatoes don't get enough heat to develop good flavor, so doubt it would be worth it. A snake and trees in the roof gutter! Well, now you know why you haven't seen snakes on the ground....they are living up there in the penthouse on the roof. Personally, I'd rather NOT see snakes at all. I have gone back and looked at our rainfall totals for all the years I could find them, and all I can say about our rainfall here is that it see-saws erratically, from 36" to about 40" in a good year and then from 19" to 24" in a bad year. This is a bad year, but it actually started in August 2007, so it is also a long year. Some long-time residents here who are in their 80s and 90s tell me Love County used to regularly get annual rainfall totals in the 40s and 50s, but it began changing in the 1970s or so and the years keep getting drier. I think there was one year in the mid-1990s when we had over 50" of rain here, but that seems long ago. When we first moved here, everyone raised something: wheat, pecans, peanuts, watermelons, muskmelons, etc. And, in just the 10 years we've been here, most of those crops have been discontinued. For a long time, though, many of the ranchers raised winter wheat, planting it in late August to late September and counting on the autumn and winter rains to make it grow. If they have cattle, they can graze the cattle on it for part of the winter, then pull the cattle off of it in spring, let the wheat head up and harvest it in May/June. Since 2005, there's less and less wheat planted every year, and an article in the Marietta Monitor a few weeks ago said almost nobody was planting wheat this year---input costs are too high, and with no rain falling, there's no guarantee the wheat would grow. Our main crop around here anymore is just native hay which hasn't done all that well in this rain-challenged year. For weeks now, one of our local TV weather guys has repeatedly referred to our "desert-like weather conditions" and it is the most accurate description possible. We're having very cool nights, very hot days, and very dry air with low humidity. Even when cold fronts come through, all they bring us is wind and cool, dry air. We need some warm fronts from the south with warmer, moist, humid air. Oh, well, there's always the hope that next year will be better. In the meantime, all we can do is try to keep the place from burning down. Dawn

Hey Peter in Az- before you do anything wait for other posts as I'm probably newer to this than you and am also working to figure it all out-lol. That said I'm pretty sure you can mow your grass, just not at the height of a regular lawn. Most mower blades have 4 inches as their highest blade setting. Native grasses are best cut between 4-8 inches so you may want to get a string-line trimmer with a hard blade option. Good luck!

I probably have about 1000 square feet of native perennials, mostly strong, tall prairie plants, spread over several beds. I am in an older suburb and burning is out of the question. In the spring, it's relatively easy to break down the stems close to ground level and either carry or rake them off the beds. Grab a handful of stalks close to ground level and bend them--do not pull, because some shallower-rooted plants will come right out of the ground. I pile last year's growth and fallen leaves onto a tarp, drag it away, and then compost all of it. I work on a small area at a time. I can't say that the entire job is enjoyable, but I do enjoy uncovering the new growth, reconnecting with the plants, weeding, and moving things around in the different beds. I should mention that I'm close to 60. I do exercises to strengthen my back muscles, especially this time of the year! I finished the whole job yesterday, and now I am really enjoying the gardens. Here is a link that might be useful: follow me on twitter

Now hold on guys. Yes, caution is absolutely required here. However, I have a builder grade fireplace that looks very similar to the OP's unit. Mine is designed for either wood or gas. My unit has the same cheesy thin metal like stuff. If you look at the other pics on flicker, you will see that the unit has a full above roof chase and what appears to be a spark cap. I believe my unit has one of those huge 14" flues which is common for these units. This one doesn't seem to be that large, which makes me wonder if it is indeed a wood burner. The top of the front of the unit also has something that looks like sheet metal extending down into the firebox that is different from mine and that makes me think of gas. Remember, these are open fireplaces and don't really generate dramatic heat. My cheesy back fake bricks never got damaged in any way. So, two points: the 'fireplace' may indeed be designed for wood and you will need to check further; AND you aren't going to heat much with this thing either.