The Ecology of Home

Abstract

Two years ago I moved to the city of El Cerrito, a small bedroom community east of San Francisco. With its typically suburban mix of buildings, domestic gardens, parks and untended marginal areas, El Cerrito didn't impress me as anything special. But I had spent several years living in neighborhoods dominated by a transient student population, and more recently, several months traveling abroad, and wanted to settle down and make a real home. This impulse drew me into an intensive search that began with finding a house to rent, and culminated, after many months, in a much deeper understanding of my place in the natural world. I was drawn to a house with a yard not a large one, but for a longtime apartment dweller, it was a seemingly luxurious extension of domestic space. An area next to the back fence had obviously once been used as a garden but now lay fallow and thick with weedy grasses. I began to fantasize about turning this shaggy plot into a real garden. Leaving aside window box planters graced by a few herbs, I would undertake the serious work of cultivation. Neat rows of tomatoes and