A and J climbing up the bank.I'm always on the hunt for great local play areas. It is easiest to start with hunting for actual playgrounds. Anyone with the care of a small child will tell you the importance of knowing your local playgrounds intimately.Just driving around isn't good enough for really exploring. I also use Yelp and Google Maps. Yelp is so useful for reviews and finding out if a playground has a bathroom or not (crucial!). In Google maps get to neighborhood level in regular Maps (not satellite) view and look for any green areas. We moved into a new house about a year ago and I found, three blocks away, the most fun little informal play area. I swear I had walked by it a million times and never even knew it was there until I saw the green band in Google Maps. It's a long skinny path mostly used by dog walkers BUT a creek runs along it for a whole block and in one spot you can cross to find a tiny little grassy picnic area. Creeks are about the best thing ever to play with, you can make dams, watch the flow of water, float boats made form leaves and bark, throw rocks, there are so many possibilities. The other non creek section has some rocks and planting beds and some neat trees. Perfect!
This area is quite urban and even though I can drive 10 minutes and be on the beautiful bay in Alameda or Berkeley it's nice to have some tiny bits of nature in walking distance.Where do you play that isn't an actual playground?
Kids playing on a neat-o tree.
KaBoom - Online Resources
It looks like KaBoom has some interesting sounding talks you can listen to online about various aspects of playground design and installation. Heres a link.There are interviews with designers, how to maintain a community garden and get volunteers, info about outdoor schools and tons more. Go check it out if you are interesting in getting your community active in having playgrounds installed and including kids in landscapes.I see KaBoom also has a new iPhone app called Playgrounds! I haven't tried it yet and I see that it gets mixed reviews. One reviewer mentions that it seems to include any school campus regardless of age range. It's not often you find a high school with a playground... and even if you did it might not be open to the public. I'll download this myself and give it a try. Hopefully my very old and getting decrepit iPhone can handle it.
Evolution of an herb spiral
When we moved in and had an arborist come cut down some of the plum trees we kept all the branches. When I was making my herb spiral I dug a hole to mix in compost and such and I buried some of the plum branches in a nod to Hugelculture. We also piled up most of them along the back wall and dumped dirt on it and have things growing on it (oh, and an embedded hillslide) in a more traditional hugelculture bed.April 2011:It started fairly small.June 2011:I enlarged it to include an attached bed for flowers.October 2011:February 2012:Here's the flower part of it in May 2012:I had a fantastic crop of borage, chamomile and comfrey plus some nice annuals this spring. I have prepared the bed for some new things but I'm not sure what. I already sprinkled some seeds randomly and put in a few ground cherries. There is also some lovely lovely smelling lemongrass and some valerian in there plus some basic herbs like rosemary and oregano.Here it is June 2012:
Lake Merritt Gardens - Sensory Garden
I love the Lake Merritt gardens. It is the perfect place to take a 2 year old! We often come to the sensory garden and J. also loves the Japanese Garden.
