Winter is a great time for dirt, leaves, and other debris to pile up in your rain gutters. Leave it long enough and there will be buildup.  Leave it a really long time and those bits of dust, plantlife and other things will mush together and decompose, eventually becoming plant-worthy soil.  Add a few seeds and some rain, and before you know it, green sprouts are popping up on your roof.

Today I passed a home in Los Gatos in which this seems to have happened.  Grass and weeds were sprouting out of the rain gutters and had crept onto the roof quite a few inches.

Why is this a problem? Because the more you grow things on the roof, the more moisture you have getting trapped up there and the faster the roof decomposes.  You don't want things like fungus and dry rot to munch away at your home, but having plants grow on your roof is going to lead to exactly that.

Keep your gutters clean so problems like this do not have a chance to start.  It is infinely easier to prevent this than to cure it.

(Not a great photo - taken with my treo's camera and enlarged to show the roof but trying to keep the house itself anonymous.)

It was a cold morning here in Belwood of Los Gatos. Our outside thermometer indicated that temps were just over freezing.  Looking down the street when grabbing the newspaper, I saw many roofs with various degrees of frost covering them.

Did you know that in the case of frost on the roof, more is better? On my Valley of Hearts Delight blog today, I present a few photos and explain why you'll want to check your roof on icy mornings, whether you are buying a home, selling a home, or maintaining one.

To learn more, please read on:
What Can You Learn from a Silicon Valley Roof on a Frosty Morning?

 

Most mornings, the alarm goes off in our Los Gatos home at 6:30am. I find my way to the coffee pot, flip it on, and sit down at my desk to see what emails may have come in overnight. My home office looks out to a small front courtyard; ours is a pseudo-Spanish style home and the view to the street goes through a small covered archway that connects one part of the U-shaped house with another.

As I sipped on my coffee and waited for the email to load today, a shadowy four-legged creature meandered across the archway roof. It was in siloutte - all shadows as the sun hadn't risen high enough to illuminate it. A cat? A squirrel? A possum? It sported a long snout and a fairly thick tail. Seemed to be a racoon. While I was still processing the possibilities, a second animal waddled right behind.

They were so cute!

I squealed with delight at these cartoonish animals so close. Jim and I hustled outside to catch a better view of them. The dog treated this like a four-alarm fire and raced around the house barking, and even when we returned inside and told her to hush, she wouldn't abandon her duty of announcing a huge danger. The neighbors must have wondered.

After about 10 minutes and the return of calm, I got a second viewing as one of them retraced its steps along the crest of the arch in better light and a second one snuggled under the overhang between the archway and the bedroom wing. It was so funny to look up and see the racoon eyes studying me from under the eaves!

In truth, they're adorable as visitors but we wouldn't want them to stay. I'm not sure how they got there, or what they expected to find on my roof. Perhaps a neighbor leaves pet food outside that attracts them? Or maybe they like one of our fruit trees? I don't know. We have seen possum in the peach tree, squirrels everywhere and sometimes a rat tries to take up residence with us. Never before racoons, though. I hope they nest somewhere else in Belwood...and just come back to visit once in awhile.