A new plan to bring baseball back to the North Bay envisions a short summer league with a dozen teams of mostly local players, and a rolling set-up to dress up existing ball fields in area parks.

The proposed Wine Country Old Fashioned Baseball League is the idea of Dry Creek Valley winery owner Howard Leonhardt (left), who says he developed it after he was unable to purchase an existing minor league team and relocate it to Sonoma County.

The long-running debate over an historic oyster farm in Drakes Estero, within the  the Point Reyes National Seashore,  has jumped from western Marin County to Washington D.C., and shows few signs of cooling off.

Fredrick Smith, Executive Director of the Environmental Action Coalition of West Marin says that, Senator Feinstein's statements to the contrary, he fears that her legislative intervention on behalf of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company will set a bad precedent that could have wide implications.

The fate and future of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company and the Estero has been a long-running and hotly debated issue in the Point Reyes area for years. Recent developments have been chronicled by the Point Reyes Light.

The gorgeous airborne view of the estuary below was taken by Sonoma-based pilot and photographer Robert Campbell . See more of his work here .

Permaculture - an idea that began around sustainable agriculture - is moving into the urban environment.

  You can also learn more about this subject at the Oakland-based Urban Permaculture Guild.

Dave Henson, Executive Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (right), explains that interest in permaculture arose in part in response to the widespread dominance of "monoculture," or large-scale farming of a single crop.

One of the enduring examples of crop integration is indigenous to Mexico and the American southwest, and known colloquially as the "three sisters."

With another 2 million people expected in the Bay Area by 2035, Greenbelt Alliance is urging local governments to plan now where they are going to live. And they've got some ideas to suggest, too.

Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Madsen (left) points to the east bay town of Hercules as one community that has proactively embraced a smart growth development plan for their city.

 How might that work in the North Bay? Greenbelt Alliance has already prepared a case study of Novato as an example.

There is mounting demand for smaller homes in attractive urban neighborhoods, says Madsen, and he predicts that builders and developers will need little encouragement to move toward meeting that demand.

If we change how the Bay Area grows, says Greenbelt Alliance, we can make our region more climate-friendly, affordable, and economically competitive, while protecting our farms, forests, and watersheds. Read more about the Grow Smart challenge here, or click here to see a regional map of projected residential growth sites.

In her recent visit to the Gaza Strip, a Sebastopol woman left behind some hot pink playground equipment, and brought back a heightened humanitarian concern for the region's residents.

CodePink , the San Francisco-based women's peace organization, assembled an international delegation of 66  that included Barbara Briggs-Ledson of Sebastopol, for a five-day visit to the Gaza Strip early this month, just ahead of President Obama's visit to Egypt. While they were there,the CodePink represetatives were given a letter from the leadership of Hamas to deliver to the President, inviting him to also visit Gaza. Read the letter here .

The sliver of land known as the Gaza Strip comprises just 139 square miles, covering roughly the distance between Sebastopol and Petaluma and extending halfway out to the coast. Home to 1.5 million residents, nearly half of them children and youth, it is intensively urbanized--the refugee camps are blocks of concrete apartment buildings. So Barbara Briggs-Letson says she took particular pleasure in helping bring something colorful for the kids to that scene.

Barbara Briggs-Letson (in white) smiles for the camera along with the Palestinian women who acted as translators for the  CodePink visitors. In addition to bringing and assembling the playgrounds, the CodePink delegation visited hospitals and other public facilities, Briggs-Letson says they also met with some of the area's political leaders.

Damaged buildings at every turn were a constant reminder of day-to-day dangers of life in the Gaza Strip, says Briggs-Letson. And there were others, too.

You can see more photos from the Code Pink Gaza delegation's trip here.