The enormous mulch pile in this small town had drawn a few grumbles from neighbors before. But it was not until it caught fire on Christmas that the sparks really began to fly.
The volcano-like mountain of branches and wood chips for use in landscaping has been smoldering ever since, spreading smoke so thick that people in this community just outside San Antonio wake up some mornings in a fog, unable to see past their front doors.
The school system has offered to let some youngsters transfer out. And people with asthma and other breathing problems have been warned to move until the fire is snuffed out.
"Easier said than done," said 73-year-old Germaine Field, whose husband has a heart condition. "Can you imagine leaving your home and living in a hotel?"
The pile of mulch, which has been sitting in an open field for more than a decade, is about 400 feet long, 225 feet wide and 70 feet tall in the middle. It is now a vast, smoking landscape, with flames shooting up periodically from the blackened expanse, in what looks like a scene from the latest "Star Wars" movie.
For weeks, though, a feud prevented anything but a limited effort to put out the fire.
Mayor Jon Allan wanted the county or state to extinguish it. The county looked to the owner of the pile, H.L. Zumwalt Construction Inc. And no one was sure how to deal with all the potential health problems and the possibility of environmental damage if the fire were doused.
"It's taken tremendous effort to get movement on this," the mayor said.
The end may finally be in sight: The state hired a contractor for about $1.75 million to put out the blaze, and its crews arrived Tuesday to begin aggressively fighting the fire. But it is expected to take another two weeks to extinguish it.
Chemicals that might quickly douse the fire cannot be widely used for fear of contaminating the underground supply of drinking water, said Terry Clawson, a spokesman for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
"You can't stress too much the environmental sensitivity issue," he said.
Investigators are still trying to figure out what started the fire. Zumwalt suspects arson.
Firefighters put water on the blaze when they first got the call on Christmas. And Zumwalt employees sprayed it down and moved unburned wood out of the way in what the company said was a seven-day-a-week operation. But until this week, no one in government had taken control of the firefighting.
"All the residents really care about is that someone is working to put the fire out," said the mayor of the town of 6,200, home of the honky tonk that helped give Willie Nelson his start. "You can put up with a lot if you know something is being done about it."
Students at an elementary school and a high school within a mile of the mulch fire have been given the option of transferring out, and children with respiratory problems are being kept inside.
"The teachers are good about singing and dancing with the kids, but you can only do so much of that" before they start getting restless, said Helotes Elementary School Principal Jeannine Keairnes.