The foothills overlooking silicon valley from the south and west lie in a thermal belt between the valley and the ridge of the peninsula coastal range. The western garden book calls this climate zone 16. It is dominated by ocean weather about 85 percent of the time and inland weather about 15 percent. The resulting cooler summers, warmer winters, and the lovely afternoon summer breezes flowing up the slopes make this a wonderful climate zone for orchards and gardens. One hundred years ago these steep slopes were covered with orchards of prunes and apricots farmed with horses. When gasoline powered tractors became affordable these hills were no longer able to compete with the flatland valley orchards.

The skeletons of old apricot trees still dot the slopes and the wild almond root stock has naturalized giving a pretty scattering of flowering almonds in early spring and inedible almonds in mid summer. Live oaks have long since invaded and overgrown these old orchards, springing up from acorns planted by scrub jays and squirrels. Plums, apricots, peaches, almonds, asian pear, persimmons, and apples do very well in this area. Temperatures very rarely dip to the low 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Heavy clay soils predominate, concrete hard in the late summer heat, sticky and gummy when wet and mud sliding fluid when saturated by heavy rains.

The foothills at around 800 feet elevation are covered by live oaks (quercus agrifolia), a few valley oaks (Q. Lobata), some madrone, california bay, california buckeye, elderberry, and the extremely fast growing monterrey pine. A few eucalyptus have made an incursion. The southerly slopes are covered with baccharus, and california sage. Second tier plants under the edges of the live oaks include toyon, coffeeberry, ribes, hollyleaf cherry, poison oak, sticky monkey flower, and manzanita. The open meadows are covered with wild oats which turns the hills green in the winter rains and yellow in the summer dry season. Hollyleaf cherry (prunus ilicifolia) makes a wonderful hedgable plant with pale flowers in spring and edible plums in summer.

The density of mule deer is probably higher than ever before in history since people no longer eat them and the mountain lions which are becoming more numerous are more afraid of the people than the deer are. Even so, our neighbor whose yard adjoins the open space had a lion kill a deer in his back yard and return several evenings to feed. So the deer are everywhere and eat almost anything, doing great damage to the natural plants. Valley oaks can't get started because the deer eat them and strip them with their horns, then the ubiquitous pocket gophers chew off their roots from below. For gardeners the choices are to use fences or to select deer proof plants. In late autumn before acorn drop the deer are famished and will eat most things that garden stores claim are deer proof. In February and March the bucks drop their antlers just before the grass has started to get tall. This year, by wandering around looking, we found 9 antlers, two of which were close enough for a match. But we never did find those of our friend seen here just before shedding and below in the summer velvet.

In addition to the deer we see coyote (and hear them more often), gray fox, raccoon, skunk, bobcat, western gray squirrel, moles, voles, field mice, pocket gophers, brush rabbits, blue belly lizards (western fence lizards), alligator lizards, western rattlesnakes, ringneck snakes, glossy snakes, and others. Glossy snakes make reasonable pets and will eat blue belly lizards (if they can detect their presence) and mice. They seem to prefer mice. They need only a water bowl, a heat rock, a meal every 6 to 12 days, and a broad spectrum light. Alligator lizards are also nice pets. They are totally indestructable. If you forget to feed them for two months they are fine. If you then dump 2 dozen crickets in their cage they will eat them all in two days. Very tough creatures.

A pair of great horned owls, one year with two fuzzy golden headed youngsters, like to spend the summers sitting on the fence posts at the edge of our orchard. They eat voles, mice, snakes and hopefully pocket gophers. Judging from the many pellets they leave, the orchard seems to feed them well. In April and May they hang around the lawn area where there is an annual explosion in the vole population. Once, I tossed a still struggling vole from a trap down the hill and the owl immediately flew in and snatched it up.

Deer proof plants shown here are pink rock rose, blue salvia, yellow euryops, trailing rosemary, and woolly grevillea. This bank literally hums with bees and other insects. The hummingbirds love it. Scattered irises add May color. There are a great many kinds of beautiful salvia, lavender, and scented geraniums that are deer proof. Also deerproof is hypericum (St. Johnswort) and of course oleander and castor bean. Ceanothus and buddleia are partly deerproof but need to be fenced until they are over four feet tall.

An old farm road running along the hillside was widened by cutting and filling to create an area some 30 feet wide and 100 feet long for a lawn and formal garden. We laid the conduit and plumbing, put in brick and sand walks, built a gravity wall to separate the two levels and added boxwood hedges, cones, and some formal accents. A potato vine completely covers the arbor at the far end of the white garden. Most of the flowers are white so that during a full moon a night time walk has magically glowing flowers in the moonlight and the smell of gardenias hangs in the air.

Irises are God's gift to heavy clay soil. Just plant them before the winter rains, give them some triple 16 in late winter and spring and they will be amazing in May. You can let their soil dry out in late summer. Roses do well in the sun (with lots of water and fertilizer) and fuchsia partly under the oaks in deep mulch. Hummingbirds always like the fuchsia.

And speaking of birds, here are the birds we see roughly in order of frequency. Dark eyed Junco, Chestnut Backed Chickadee, Rufus Sided Towhee, Brown Towhee, Purple Finch, Cliff Swallow, Plain Titmouse, Stellar Jay, Scrub Jay, Red Tailed Hawk, Humming Birds, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, Bewick's Wren, California Quail, Phoebe, Western Bluebird, Great Horned Owl, California Thrasher, Downey Woodpecker, Black Headed Grosbeak, Red Shafted Flicker, Robin, Acorn Woodpecker, Yellow Rumped Warbler, Townsend's Warbler, Hooded Oriole, Bullock's Oriole, American Kestrel, Prairie Falcon. When I am finally able to take decent pictures of birds, I will add them to the webpage somewhere. If you are a beekeeper, here is a plan for a bee vacuum. And, of course, you will need a rat trap.