“Do you work in music?” asked the guy behind the glass at the main Oakland post office.
I looked down at the workout gear I was wearing, looking for the clue that might have made him ask the question. “No,” I said. “I work right downtown.” Which, I might point out, comes only tangentially close to [...]

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
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It’s Thanksgiving here at Chez Inadvertent, and there’s much to be grateful for.
My parents arrived Tuesday night to celebrate the holidays here, and we’ve been making our way around to various eating and drinking establishments that are favorites of mine: Shan Dong for dumplings, The Trappist for Belgian-style brews, Café Madrid for tortilla Español and [...]

“I’m a little worried about this whole community-gardening thing,” I told a friend one night recently over drinks. “I’ve never gardened anywhere but Iowa, and the garden there was right out my back door.”
“Then you can go out and weed for 10 minutes and come back in and do other stuff,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. [...]

The map? Made.
There are eight community gardens in the Oakland system: three up toward Temescal and Emeryville, three smack dab in the heart of it all (right around downtown), and two down toward San Leandro.
I know I said making a Google map of the garden locations was the most nerdy thing I could possibly do, [...]

I decided this Thanksgiving will not be traditional. Why serve turkey, for example, when I live just a block or so from excellent Peking duck? Why serve green bean casserole when I can serve garlicky Romano beans with rosemary, every ingredient of which will be grown or produced within 100 miles of here? Why serve [...]

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Green Thumb Sunday: Flame against palms”, url: “http://www.theinadvertentgardener.com/index.php/2008/11/16/green-thumb-sunday-flame-against-palms/” });

The next step in the find-a-garden-plot investigation was to email the guy who runs the community gardening program. I figured there was no way I’d get in at Lake Merritt, but as I said, I figured there had to be some plot, somewhere in Oakland, where I could just slide right in, no problem.
As it [...]

Before I moved to California, I gave some thought to the whole how-am-I-going-to-garden concept. I had visions of a balcony garden, complete with herbs and maybe a flower or two, and some peppers ripening in the golden sunshine. I imagined myself sitting out on the balcony, sipping a glass of wine, and marveling at a [...]

When I let Amy Sherman of Cooking With Amy talk me into the Hunger Challenge, I’m going to have to be honest…I had no idea what I was in for. I mean, I’m Catholic, and besides that, I have a pretty outsized ability to beat myself up and set arbitrary rules for myself, so for [...]