East Bay Home and Gardens

The Rise and Fall of a West Coast Knitting Pioneer

By Daniella Thompson
Friday February 08, 2008
For seven decades spanning the period from the 1880s to the 1950s, San Francisco was an important hub in the American knitting industry. It became so thanks to one Swiss immigrant: John Jacob Pfister (1844–1921). -more-

Music to Your Ears

By Ron Sullivan
Friday February 08, 2008
I’m listening to the mow-n-blow couple working their way through the neighborhood. I’m about bored with things that roar and go bang, especially in the garden, especially at midday because, surprise, I work right here at home. To judge by the time they’ve spent on the token lawn in front of the apartment next door, the various gas-powered gadgets don’t save much time and they must make the work as hard with their weight as the average push mower, weed whip/scythe, or rake would with just repetitive motion. Don’t get me started on what errant weedwhackers do to tree trunks; I ranted sufficiently last week to keep my diastole high. -more-

The Care and Feeding of Floor Furnaces

By Matt Cantor
Friday February 08, 2008
One of the most common features in our early 20th century housing stock is that imperishable ruffian of the heating world, the floor furnace. -more-

Green Neighbors: Trees Show Their Bones and History in Winter

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday February 05, 2008
Most of the public and literary appreciation for bare trees seems to come from wintry places like New England, but bonsai artists and fans and the landscape pruners who think along similar lines make a big deal of the “winter silhouette.” It’s one of the most refined criteria for judging a deciduous tree. -more-