Small Freakin' Spider (stand in for proper ID)

This spider likes science. It was caught eavesdropping on my practice for a research talk. I wish I could tell you who it is, but all the keys required me to look at body parts not visible in this photo. Oscar did not eat this spider, so perhaps it is still scurrying about downstairs and I'll get another photo angle (need fangs and eyes visible!)

The right wrigglers

Hundreds of these Eisenia foetida (red wigglers, or as I seem to keep saying, "red wrigglers") live in our compost bin. They have a vegetarian diet at our place, consuming most of our non-toxic food scraps. That is, anything we buy that isn't organic (barely anything) doesn't go in the worm bin. Also not going into the worm bin are things that will germinate and grow in there: squash and pepper seeds, as examples. Also, they don't make much of corn cobs.

Favor's flavor

I have been getting lemons from my friend Sharlene all year, and she has been very generous (luckily her tree is big and produces a lot of fruit). But a few months ago, it started to seem increasingly ridiculous, so we got a dwarf Meyer lemon tree. It lives in our courtyard in a pot. Last month, it produced a huge number of flowers, given it's small size. Those flowers were visited by numerous bees and at least one hummingbird. Too bad I wasn't documenting our fauna back then. It is currently growing numerous small lemons. I doubt any from this season will grow enough to harvest (though I may be wrong since I've never had a "dwarf" fruit tree before), but it's nice to know we have awesome pollination.

Avogadro's law

At this point, with three animals and no plants represented in our guide, we are out of equilibrium.

Meet Avogadro, our young avocado tree. It's in a family named after my sister (or is that the other way around?), and she's been seen at 227F, so it's a good plant to start with. When Avogadro has grown a few more leaves, I'll update the pic.

The girl next door

Saphira lives down in Santa Cruz, but she spends a lot of time here. She thought she ran the show here at 227F until Oscar showed up.






She basically still runs the show, and she and Oscar are best buds now.

Our main mammal

I hope Oscar isn't insulted that I put up an inaugural post and it wasn't about him. I'll try to make up for that now.


Oscar was first sighted at 227F on January 5, 2008. He's been seen there most days ever since.

His first adventures upon arriving were documented elsewhere , the little we know about his origin is that he came from Oklahoma, was adopted out of one shelter, and at some future point he was in the possession of animal control and about to be euthanized. That's when he was rescued and trucked out here to CA. We adopted him out of the SFSPCA 2 days later. Adopting him is one of the best things that has happened here at 227F.

The fauna (and maybe later some flora) of our home

My friend Alex has been keeping an electronic record of all the critters he's seen at his home for a few years. It's pretty impressive at this point. Not living in a very woodsy area, and not knowing how long my husband and I will live here at 227F, I haven't been inspired to start one up at our place.

That is, until last night.

I opened the door to find this guy, a 5-legged preying mantis, sitting out there on our front step. Too cool. He's missing most of one of his forelegs, seems to be broken off at his right first coxa. I don't know if he will be able to successfully catch prey at this point, but we let him go after taking his photo. So, I guess we'll never know.

Thus begins our guide.