western gray tree squirrel Column: Josh Reilly Columns Gardening 

Integrated Pest Management for Tree Squirrels

By Josh Reilly Tree squirrels seem most active at this time of year. Running along perilously lofty, narrow power lines and fence tops, cheeks puffed out with food.  Balancing and bobbing on thin branches, chattering noisily when passing house cats skulk below and hawks glide above, leaping across yawning gulfs of air, in seeming defiance of the laws of physics, they… Read More
camp joy gardens Farms Gardening Local News 

Gathering in the Harvest at Camp Joy Gardens

By Julie Horner The comice pears have come in at Camp Joy Gardens. Windfall apples from several varieties of trees fill the air with a syrupy headiness; stalks of reddish-rose colored amaranth and fading sunflowers blaze against a cloudless blue sky; and pumpkins peek from their leafy umbrage. Towhee Nelson, daughter of Camp Joy founder Jim Nelson, grew up on… Read More
Purpletop vervain and aloe Column: Josh Reilly Columns Gardening 

Gardening: In Praise of Spreaders, Fillers, and Colonizers

By Josh Reilly Some garden plants are a bit weedy. Indelicate and misbehaved, they sometimes “don’t play well with others.” Some of them will crowd and shade out other garden favorites. Native plant enthusiasts fear more catastrophic, apocalyptic outcomes, and in several notable cases, they are right. Miles of California riparian corridors are now choked with English Ivy, (Hedera sp).… Read More
hummingbird sage in the may garden Column: Josh Reilly Columns Gardening 

Showtime in the Garden: May Blooms and Vegetable Garden Bliss

By Josh Reilly It’s showtime! We’ve spent the long, cold Winter peeking out the window through the downpour at leafless stems, shoots, and branches. And mud. We’ve allowed ourselves a little advance joy with each new leaf or flower bud that we see in March and the big warm-up, April. Then comes May. It’s a bit like that moment when… Read More