Exploding houses & my garden (not that they’re related)

Last week a house in my complex exploded. Not like Michael Bay ball of flames explosion, but there was a definite BOOM. I work from home so I felt it, and I thought it was an earthquake… until the cops knocked on my door and told me I should probably evacuate since there was still a gas leak.

Okaaaay.

So I packed up the kitties (who were most displeased) and we fled to Judy’s house, where we camped out for a bit until it was safe to go home.

I went by yesterday morning to take some photos of the asploded house.

Turns out there was a gas leak that filled up the garage and when it hit the pilot light on the furnace: big badaboom. No one was hurt though. No humans were in the house and the doggy made it out fine too. They found him hiding under the bed in the only room that survived the fire.

The lady who owns the house smelled gas that morning when she left but didn’t call it in. So the lesson here is: if you smell gas, call it in! Or you might not have a house anymore. -_-

 

 

The explosion blew the garage door off. Craziness!

It also blew holes in the ceiling which you can kind of see thru the balcony slats.

PG&E has been by to inspect all our homes for gas leaks and I got gas/CO2 detectors yesterday at Home Depot to install in our kitchen and garage. My mom suggested we switch to electric but even if we did, the gas lines are running under all these houses. It’s not like the gas leak that caused the explosion was in the lady’s house. I guess we’ll all just have to be more aware.

On the plus side, I met more neighbors that day than I have met in the last 2 years of living here. LOL. Nothing like standing around trying to figure out what the hell is going on to bring people together!

And just cause I was running around outside with my camera, I took photos of my gardening attempts. I’m terrible at it… Marcus calls then my “victimz”. I’ve only killed 2 plants so far though! -_-

We don’t really have a yard so I’ve been growing everything in pots on our patio.

This guy sits in the front of our house. I’ve been rotating plants from the backyard so that we always have something pretty flowering in front.

Here’s the fuschia I nearly killed. ^^; I think he’s making a come-back though!

And here’s my fuschia bush that’s about to bloom. I love fuschia, can you tell?

This is a bai yulan (michelia alba) tree I got from a Chinese nursery. I’ve wanted one of these trees forever! They have the most fragrant flowers. In Taiwan, people sell bunches of the flower on the streets, and they’re all over the Buddhist temple altars. I didn’t know it was possible to grow them in CA until I saw one in my dance classmate’s front yard. I’m so excited to have one! I hope I don’t kill it.  @_@

This is Bobo reminding me that it is far far easier to grow cats. See, cats have a great feedback system. They tell you when they want something or they think you’re doing it wrong. Plants just die. Very unacceptable feedback format. =P

I love dahlias too, but I hear they’re hard to grow so we’ll have see how I do before I buy more.

Million bells. I looked up “hard to kill flowers” on Google and this was one of the suggestions. =D They’re really cute!

And now it’s back to the the mile-long-list of things to do for work. Urgh.