Sausal Creek, Finally!

You were probably wondering when I would get around to writing about Sausal Creek.  I will start today.

I own half of a bit of an urban culverted creek.  Creeks are celebrities in the Bay Area. Sausal Creek has a fairly large community non-profit fan club, called Friends of Sausal Creek.  These folks are dedicated to restoring native flora and fauna to this little stream ecosystem corridor through Oakland.  They tell you all about it on their website.  They are wonderful people, but can rouse little enthusiasm for my part of the creek, in the low income flat part of Oakland.  The original course of the creek down here is unknown, there is a lot of fill and it looks like it's course was straightened when they logged the huge first growth redwoods up in the hill in the 19th century, so they could pull logs to ships using the creek as a sluice to float the logs out to the bay for shipping.   However, there is a little kink in the line near me house, so who knows.

Until the 80's I hear all the neighborhood kids played in the creek behind my house, and neighbors fought over the ill defined border between properties--our deeds say the properties extend half way across the creek.  Imagine the battles when erosion or course changes occurred.  Then, the creek was given high cement walls and base and a strong tall anchor style fence at the top. I have owned the house one year.   There is no way for me to get to the creek (I own half of) now.  But there are a lot of plusses to that for me, so I'm not complaining.

There is a Creek Ordinance in Oakland, and it has so many rules for what I can do with my property, that at times it seems I might be arrested for tossing out a glass of water in my yard... thanks to my friends at Friends of Sausal Creek.  I have a lot of dreams of restoring the habitat, back to what it probably never was, but should have been!  I'm share that as we go along.  Meanwhile, I'll show you the BEFORE photo, the one on top.

I love living here, I'm not the only one who lives here.  We have raccoons, feral cats, a hawk, a lot of hummingbirds, crickets, a Great Egret who visits on special occasions.  There are fish found each year upstream, so they have to go by my house.  I am determined to spot one.