East Bay Home and Gardens

Not that I miss them, but I haven’t found any Argentine ants in the house this winter. I hesitate to consider this a permanent victory, though. They’re out there somewhere, biding their time. -more-

The settlement of the residential blocks south of the UC campus began, naturally, on the streets closest to the university and progressed southward. In 1903, the area now known as the Willard neighborhood, comprising the Hillegass and Berry-Bangs tracts and bounded, clockwise, by Dwight Way, College, Ashby, and Telegraph Avenues, was most densely built along Benvenue and Hillegass Avenues north of Derby Street. -more-

When you crawl around under houses every day, you see some odd things. It’s part archaeology, a little zoology and, of course, all that construction stuff. It doesn’t take too long doing this to realize that you’re not always alone down under the house (or up in the attic). There are little neighbors that like to share the space. They’re not trying to get inside your house, per se. It’s just that they want a safe warm space and you happen to be right there. Termites use the same logic. They don’t know that they’re eating a house. What’s a house to a termite. They’re just eating some fallen trees that happen be in their path. -more-

Woodland gardening takes on a new aspect when one is practicing it here in coastal northern California. There are considerations one must take with regard to natural resources and scarcity—as much a product of time as of place, as everything living here gets more squeezed by human overpopulation, including us humans who are doing the overpopulating. -more-