Greeneroo

Dear Friend of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex:

I would like to invite you to join Senator Dianne Feinstein and other notables on Tuesday, September 7, from 9:30am to 11:00am, for a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating completion of work on a major piece of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project—Pond SF2, one of the Ravenswood Ponds at the western foot of the Dumbarton Bridge.

The restoration of this former salt pond is a significant milestone. It employs cutting-edge design to provide high quality habitat for shorebirds in the South Bay, and it is a showcase for public access, with an upgraded trail and new viewing platforms and interpretive exhibits.

It is an achievement worth celebrating!

The event will be held on site at Pond SF 2. There will be a shuttle service to the event location from an adjacent parking lot (directions below). Please plan to arrive at 9:30 am to allow time for the shuttle, as the event will begin promptly at 10:00 am. It is also advisable to wear comfortable shoes.

We hope you can join us—and, please, feel free to pass this invitation along to others you think might be interested in attending.

Sincerely,
G. Mendel Stewart
Manager,
San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge Complex

Directions to Parking (where a shuttle will take you the short drive to the event site):
From Hwy. 101 exit east on Highway 84, toward the Dumbarton Bridge. Just before the bridge, a frontage road exit to the right leads to a parking lot along the side of the bridge, adjacent to the pond site.
From Interstate 880 exit west on Highway 84. Just after crossing the Dumbarton Bridge, take the frontage road exit right and follow the road to the right, under the bridge to the parking area.
Shuttle vans and U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel will be waiting for you in the parking lot.

San Frrancisco Bay NWR Complex
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(510) 792-0222

This is depressing, but you’ve gotta know, if you are going to play in the water: 10 worst beaches

Please clean up after yourself when you go to the beach, and make sure to take any plastic bags you see (whether they BELONG to you or NOT) and properly dispose of them. It takes a minute to grab a stray bag and it can mean you saved the life of a marine animal!

If you want to help, check SAVE THE  BAY, they have outings, plantings and clean ups all over the bay area. These events are fun, and you are really making a difference, no skill needed, and the great staff explains what to do and provides tools and whatever you need.

This ice cream is great, tasty, creamy, fresh! I got to taste it during a demo at Costco, and was so impressed. Laloo’s green commitment is phenomenal. The location of the happy goats and HQ is Petaluma. It naturally has less fat and lactose than cows milk and all the essential amino acids. Slow food is a priority, and they compost too, considering each step of production. They have invited us to all come and visit them at the Wednesday night Petaluma Farmer’s Market or other events.  Try Cajeta de Leche, froyo with a caramel swirl and Texas toffee bits, it will make you cry with happiness. Laloos is easy to find at the Bay Area stores (and throughout the US) below:

• Whole Food’s Market
• Mollie Stone’s
• Piazza’s Market (Palo Alto, San Mateo)
• Draeger’s Market
• Andronicos
• There is a store locator on the site, just plug in your zip code to find a store next to you

What better way to celebrate the end of the summer than a visit to the beautiful HIDDEN VILLA? 
WHEN: Sunday, August 29, 2010 from  5:30 to 7:30 pm. HV has been closed during the week for campers this summer. Now it is our chance to relax and enjoy. The cost is just $10 per car.

26870 Moody Rd
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022
(650) 949-8641

This event features two incredible bands! Chelle & Friends will pump out their New Orleans sound and Orquesta d’Soul will inspire everyone to get up and dance with Latin rhythms! Bring a picnic and lawn chair or blanket. Hidden Villa fresh produce salads and sandwiches will be available for purchase. Parking is located at Foothill College in Lot #7. Shuttle bus service to Hidden Villa begins at 4:30 pm.

Advanced Registration is required.$10 per car. Limit of one car per household! Advance registration is required.
YOUR CONFIRMATION EMAIL SERVES AS YOUR PARKING PASS.
PLEASE PRINT IT OUT AND BRING IT WITH YOU TO THE CONCERT.

August 21, 2 hour class 9-11am
131 Camp Joy
Boulder Creek
campjoygardens.org          831-338-3651

They have many events and opportunities to learn more:  http://campjoygardens.org/events/eventscal.html

The most incredible exhibit that I ever attended was “Ashes & Snow” by Gregory Colbert. It was May 2006, and the Nomadic Museum had traveled to Santa Monica. It was the most amazing blend of photographs, movies and a stunning, innovative, mobile space. The museum building was created from several levels of stacked shipping containers which composed the walls of the portable museum in the parking lot of the Santa Monica Pier. The space was soaring, large photos were hung from wires and visitors walked along 2×4 pathways, much like you might find at the beach in a “sensitive dune” area.

The multi-media exhibit travelled to three continents, and welcomed over 10 million visitors in six years, from 2002 to 2008, ending in Mexico City.
Colbert’s incredibible photographic works, 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters portrayed animals in their natuaral world with people. It was lyrical, the photos and movies of people swimming with elephants in the rivers are so amazing. The artistic nature of animals, and the respect and collaboration between them and the humans that share their world is thrilling. I encourage you to look through the website and enjoy again or for the very first time!
Ashes and Snow: http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/vision/

Several of the prints and books are available in eBay.

TODAY — FREE!!

This film is a fascinating documentary covering two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. ‘”What’s On Your Plate” is exactly the film we need now.’ – Michael Pollan

Directed by Catherine Gund; 73 min; 2009.      The showing of this community building film is sponsored by Chipotle.

Date:  7/30/2010   Time: 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Where:

Fair Oaks Library
2510 Middlefield Rd
Redwood City, CA 94063

For more great events, movies, music, art, check out the Redwood City Event Calendar: 

 http://www.ci.redwood-city.ca.us/calendar/calendar.aspx

Watch out for your dangling jewelry and leave that tiny dog at home!

Come out to see a huge collection of carnivorous plants!

Oh no! They’re back, and they’re more frightfully fun than ever! This summer, the Conservatory of Flowers becomes a Little Shop of Horticultural Horrors with “Chomp 2! Return of the Carnivorous Plants.” Immerse yourself in a swampy paradise for meat-eating plants like the statuesque white trumpets of the American Southeast, the sinister pitcher plants of Borneo and the glistening sundews of South Africa. The extraordinary beauty and diversity of species on display will dazzle even the most squeamish.

“Chomp 2! Return of the Carnivorous Plants” features expanded displays of these natural born killers with dazzling, new additions like the Dionaea B-52, the world’s largest Venus flytrap with traps up to two inches square, and the aptly named (for a bug, that is) ‘Abandoned Hope,’ a pitcher plant hybrid that can grow up to two feet tall. Visitors can feast their eyes on hundreds of multi-colored, meat-eating plants arranged in swampy, living bogs that showcase species both by their trapping strategies and by their native regions and countries.

Website: http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/

Location:    100 John F. Kennedy Drive;  San Francisco, CA 94118
415 -831 -2090

Paxton Gate Online!

Bringing the Conservatory of Flowers’ Fly Trap Theater out of Golden Gate Park and into the Mission!

The Fly Trap Theater is a fun presentation by the Conservatory of Flowers’ own knowledgeable and friendly tour guides! Learn why and how carnivorous plants are different from other plants, what areas in the world produce plants that eat bugs, why these plants hunt, and how they attack! Carnivorous plants will be dissected, their trapping mechanisms looked at up close and personally, in order to learn about the different adaptations these creatures use to lure tasty bug dinners into their plant jaws! After uncovering the mysteries of the carnivorous plants in the Fly Trap Theater, we’ll create our own bug and plant puppets replicating traps seen in nature that use gummy slime, sticky stalks, hairy triggers, and dark mazes – or use our imaginations to create totally new carnivorous creatures! – to perform our own CHOMP scenes time and again!

 WHEN: July  24, 2010

TIME: 2-4 pm (BUZZ by throughout!)   

WHERE: Curiosities for Kids at 766 Valencia, San Francisco, in between 18^th and 19^th Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District.

COST: FREE!

Please note: During the course of the Chomp! 2 exhibition, Paxton Gate is offering 15% off plants and gardening supplies at both of their stores with a ticket stub from the Conservatory of Flowers.  Also, The Conservatory is offering 2 for 1 entry if you show your Paxton Gate receipt dated during the run of the exhibit! (May 7 – October 31, 2010).

Mark your Calendars – this is one of the nicest events. Sign up for the 26th annual Palo Alto Weekly Moonlight Run & Walk! The popular event will be held Sept. 24, 2010, at the Baylands Athletic Center off Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto. Sign up for the 5K run or walk, or go all out and try the 10K run. The evening also features music, refreshments, prize giveaways, a climbing wall for kids and much more. Register now.

More Information:

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/moonlight_run/

Jazz on the River

This area is beautiful and although this event is crowded it is an amazing combination of river, pines, music and sun. This is a Northern California spectacular. Remember to car pool,  bring your bio-degradable paper products/soaps/ containers and let’s leave Russian River better than we found it.

Description:In 2010 Jazz on the River and the Russian River Blues Festival will be combined. Jazz will be performed on Saturday and Blues will be performed on Sunday. For more info and pictures of the site click here Russian River Blues Festival.

Jazz on the River is a great way to spend the weekend. This Festival is also often called the Russian River Jazz Festival because earlier in the year the Russian River Blues festival takes place in the same area at Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville. The setting couldn’t be better. Huge redwood trees surround you with the hot sun shining through. Everyone hangs out on lawn chairs and just kicks back while the music plays. If you get too hot, just jump in the warm and inviting Russian River for a dip. Check out the Annual Events banner at the top of this page and also check out the Russian River Blues Festival page to get an idea of the surroundings.

Jazz on the River – Russian River Jazz Festival & The Russian River Blues Festival at Johnson’s Beach in Guerneville 2010 Line Up – COMING SOON. 

WEBSITE