East Bay Home and Gardens

Ploughshares Nursery is a unique operation. Located off Main Street on the former Alameda Naval Air Station, across from the Rosenblum Winery and the ferry terminal, it’s owned by the Alameda Point Collaborative. The Collaborative describes itself as a “supportive housing community,” with 500 formerly homeless people—veterans, domestic violence survivors, children and adults with disabilities—living in converted Navy housing. It offers counseling, life skills coaching, and job training, through the nursery and otherwise. Proceeds from the plants you buy at Ploughshares go to the Collaborative. -more-

There are few things in life as embarrassing as having to ask your hostess what’s in the casserole. I know. I’ve been doing this for the last 15 years or so since having finally figured out after many distressing years that I’m not good friends with bovine products. -more-

There aren’t lots of them around, but many are in bloom now so it’s a bit easier to spot them: silk oak, Grevillea robusta. Their leaves have a distinctive profile, a bit like an exaggerated oak-leaf shape, verging on the fernish; I suppose that might account for the name, but the Aussies have a habit of calling any old thing some kind of “oak”—casaurina is “she-oak” for example, and that genus has foliage that looks like pine needles. -more-