This seven-minute film taken from the front of a San Francisco streetcar going the length of Market Street toward the Ferry Building is said to have been shot four days before the earthquake and fire of 1906, and to have survived because it was sent by train to New York for processing before the quake. (According to a comment from happykt, “From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered … it was filmed only FOU ..read more

I first posted about spritzes some twelve years ago. It’s time for an update. First of all, what are these things anyway? Definitions vary, but if you order a spritz (pronounced “spriss” in Italy) in a bar or restaurant what you’re likely to get is a low-alcoholic, bubbly drink that is at least slightly bitter, and sometimes very bitter. The word itself comes from the German spritzen, meaning “to spray.” There is a long history of proto-spritzes (or at least the dilution of wine)  extending back to ancient times. Classicist James Grout tells us in his Encyclopaedia Romana that in the Roma ..read more

Staghorn ferns comprise eighteen species in the  genus Platycerium of the polypod family (Polypodiaceae). They are native to Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia. This one lives by the “tree fern path” on the north side of the Australasian collection area at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley. These ferns are epiphytes, meaning they grown on the surface of another plant — in this case a tree fern — taking their nutrients from air, rain, and debris on the host (phorophyte) plant. (Sometimes gardeners attach them to boards or baskets. See A Piece of Rainbow’s “How t ..read more

Originally native to the arid southwest of North America, the resourceful house finch (Carpodocus mexicanus), is now found in every U.S. state. After nesting, the finches gather into sizable flocks — ours are particularly fond of hanging out in the Pineapple guava (Feijoa). They are attractive little birds with a pleasing sort of bebop jazzy song (performed by the male). You can listen to it at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology ..read more

Bokashi system: pail with tight lid and spigot, cup for Bokashi tea, implement for pressing down food waste materials, and Bokashi starter. Fermentation is the bacterial and fungal process of decomposing sugars that gives us wine, beer, cheese, salame, pickles, kimchi, and so much more. Recently I made a post about making homemade ginger beer, a process that uses wild bacteria to ferment ginger brew. (The bible for kitchen fermentation is Sandor Katz’s The Art of Fermentation.) Today I would like to talk about using fermentation to safely convert the valuable nutrients in kitc ..read more

Fresh from the oven. These were made with last year’s persimmons, pulled from the freezer ..read more

This year we have several — well, four — pepper plants in the garden, all ready for harvest now that it’s September. In the past I have dried some of the peppers and cooked or eaten some fresh, but I also usually ended up wasting a bunch. So I decided to quick pickle some of the peppers. I thought I’d begin with the mildest of our peppers, the pasilla bajio. According to Gardening Know How This chili’s name in Spanish literally means “little raisin.” This is a slight misnomer, since the pepper is much bigger than a raisin, usually reaching 6 to 9 inches (15-23 cm.) in length and 1 inch (2.5 c ..read more

Thank you to a twitter account called Feedspot Blogs for selecting Tom’s Garden as one of their Top California Gardening Blogs on the web. It’s not much deserved since I have been largely inactive as a blogger for some time, but it’s still nice, and maybe will inspire me to be a little more active again. (In fact, I’m about to start a post about quick pickling pasilla bajio peppers–stay tuned ..read more

Western Hop Tree, Ptelea crenulata Our Western Hop Tree is about three years old now and is looking good, getting ready to produce its many fragrant cream-colored flowers. They will be set off beautifully against its glossy deep green broad leaves. The plant is in the citrus family, and it produces light green fruits, which are said to be “acid” and “tonic” (I have not tested this). Las Pilitas calls its look “prehistoric woodland.” We were fortunate to find our specimen in a small (D-16) container at Watershed Nursery in Richmond. A shrub or small deciduous tree to about fifteen feet, it’s on ..read more

Seaside Daisy, Erigeron glaucus ..read more