Category Archives: Nature
A planner who favors edible, eco education — and risks
In the course of her travels researching her new book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation, Sharon Gamson Danks was struck by two things: First, the United States is a world leader in school food gardens and Berkeley is firmly at the epicenter of that movement.
And second, the U.S. lags far behind other countries when it comes to building green schoolyards with eco-friendly aspects beyond a produce patch — in other words spaces that encourage play with potential risk. We’re talking less asphalt and metal structures, and more nature nooks and shaded ponds.
An environmental planner, Danks and landscape architect Lisa Howard run Bay Tree Design in Berkeley, which specializes in designing ecological outdoor play spaces. They incorporate ideas Danks picked up from her playground adventures overseas. … Continue reading »
Rain, rain go away?
With more torrential rain today, it seems like March has been an unending downpour. This morning’s rain supplemented already high creeks in Berkeley and if your street’s storm drain was clogged, you’re certain to have serious flooding problems. But we’re not out of the rain quite yet.
“There will be another system moving through in the next couple of days,” Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, told Berkeleyside. “It won’t be quite as windy or quite as stormy. By Sunday it should be better.” … Continue reading »
Hail yes
Berkeleysider Alan Tobey used Berkeleyside’s iPhone app last night to send us photos of “the largest hail I’ve ever seen” in Berkeley. Tobey took the photo in the Westbrae neighborhood.
Shortly after, Alina Constantinescu sent us a startling photo of Solano Avenue after the hail. Her comment: “The weather (or maybe the season?) changed while we enjoyed a plate of pasta.”
In the Elmwood there was no hail but torrential rain and ominous thunder.
Did your part of Berkeley … Continue reading »
Lucky Dog pet store is shut down
The owner of Lucky Dog pet store lost his bid to keep his San Pablo Avenue store open for a few days longer so he could find homes for the chickens, pigeons, fish, turtles, rabbit, and guinea pig he had for sale.
After a judge in Alameda County Superior Court refused to grant an extension, Bobby Rostam stayed up all night on Wednesday clearing out his space at 2154 San Pablo in anticipation of getting locked out of the building by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department at 6:01 am today.
Rostam managed to find homes for most of the animals except the chickens and pigeons, he said. He had been planning to transfer them to his home and had started to construct a foundation for the coops, but was informed by the property manager that he would be charged $115 a day for every day the birds remained on the premises, he said. … Continue reading »
Closure of Lucky Dog pet store puts animals at risk
A dispute over rent and repairs has prompted a landlord to evict the Lucky Dog pet store from its home on San Pablo Avenue, putting the lives of dozens of animals at risk.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department is scheduled to arrive at 2154 San Pablo Avenue at 6:00 am Thursday to take over the property, even though Bobby Rostam, the owner of Lucky Dog, doesn’t yet have a home for the chickens, pigeons, birds, rabbits, turtles, guinea pig, and fish that currently live in the store.
Rostam and his attorneys are asking Alameda County Superior Court for a 10-day reprieve, and they should know the results late on Wednesday.
“I have a bunch of chickens,” Rostam said Wednesday as he oversaw a close-out sale of his store. “I don’t know what I am going to do with them.”
“This is one of the last old-style pet stores in Berkeley,” said Rostam. “I have little customers coming here. The kids really love it. If I leave, there’s nothing for them.”
Rostam, whose legal name is Behrouze Rostampouir, said the trouble began when Mary Pagones, the landlord, refused to make repairs to the store. Water leaked through the roof and skylights, damaging his products and sending chunks of plaster to the floor.
Did it snow after all in the hills of Berkeley?
What was this snowy mountain we saw in our rear-view mirror yesterday as we drove in an easterly direction down Derby Street? In fact, it was a rather magnificent, low-lying cloud formation above the Berkeley-Oakland hills above Claremont Canyon.
Did anyone manage to snap some better photographs than the one above?
Berkeley in bloom: Shadow play and winter silhouettes
When I was a young man (9th grade) falling in love with nature and in particular with trees, I was struck by a passage in The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins was walking through a forest and he observed: “Never before have I become so suddenly and so keenly aware of a tree’s skin, neither as a forester nor as a carpenter but in the delight of the living tree itself”. My love affair with trees has grown deeper every year.
Winter is the best time to select a specimen tree for your garden as you get the opportunity to see the naked tree in its true form.
These photographs with extended captions were all taken locally as I make my way through each day noting and observing the beautiful, often architectural shapes and forms created by nature.
Film about father of conservation to be shown in Berkeley
When the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold was a young ranger in the early part of the 20th century, he and some friends came upon a pack of wolves crossing a river. It was an era when killing wildlife was routine, and the group whipped out their shotguns and sent a fusillade of bullets at the wolves.
When Leopold climbed down the craggy cliff to claim his trophy, he watched a “fierce green fire” dying in the wolf’s eyes.
“I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain,” Leopold would later write in his landmark 1948 book Sand Country Almanac. “I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” … Continue reading »
Snow forecast for Berkeley — really?
“The snow icon?” “In Berkeley?” asks Berkeleysider Emily Cohen as she checks the weather forecast on her cell phone (above).
Think it’s really going to happen? If so, will it be limited to the hills, or might we see some white stuff on the flats? If there’s anyone who remembers significant snowfall in Berkeley, let us know — better still send in photos.
Update, 10:22: OK. The data is already coming in. Thanks to Dave Gilson, who … Continue reading »
Two Eucalyptus trees come down in Claremont canyon
Anyone taking a hike up the Claremont Canyon fire trail recently will have seen that two neighboring Eucalyptus trees, located on the second stretch of path after the first hair-pin turn, were ripped from the ground, we assume by the high winds and rain Berkeley has been experiencing over the past few days.
The trees fell directly across the path, but tree cutters have been out to chop them into more manageable pieces ahead of removing them from the site.
