The Mountain Gardener | Attracting More Birds, Bees & Butterflies with Natives
It's always a breathtaking experience taking a walk at this time of year. You might see the cobalt blue flowers of ceanothus or a stand of dicentra formosa with their dainty pink bell-shaped flowers backlit in the spring sunlight. Coral bells are in full...
The Mountain Gardener | What’s Old is New Again: Gardening Trends for 2025
In the spirit of my annual New Year’s resolution to learn something new every day, I did some research on Calscape about adding butterfly friendly natives to my partly shady garden and did some reading on garden design trends for 2025. Turns out the...
Pantone Color of the Year 2021
Apparently, there was some controversy in 2019 over Pantone choosing Living Coral as its Color of the Year because healthy living coral is in short supply. I thought the color coral worked just fine in the garden but then Classic Blue won the top...
Mayor’s Message | Calling the Question
Sometimes you just have to turn to the man for guidance, and in this case, Shakespeare states it perfectly in “Macbeth”:
Double, double toil and trouble,Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.
Macbeth did in fact fall victim to...
Understanding Emotions of Kids, Teens and Helping Them Cope
Maaliea Wilbur
TherapyWorks
Being a kid or teen is hard. It’s even harder in 2020. Kids are resilient, but they also have emotions just like adults. They get anxious, stressed, sad, angry and depressed. It is one of our goals at TherapyWorks to provide resources and...
A Day in the ER With Dignity Health
The phone rang, and my doctor’s assistant was on the other end.
“Janet, our office is not equipped to help you; you must go to the ER (emergency room) today.”
I was almost out the door heading to a 1:1 meeting over the hill before the...
Plain Talk About Food | Is There a ‘Watch Bird’ Watching You?
Imagine being 5 years old and learning (from the other kids) it was possible, just possible…there was NO Santa Claus. This 5-year-old was devastated.
In my little and quite poor hometown, the one hope we kids had was to get our one wish for Christmas...
Plain Talk About Food | Hand Pies and More
Hand pies are such an ingenious way to create an individual pie without the problems of serving and the opportunity of various fillings. These freeze and travel well.
In my aunt’s kitchen, hand pies came with left-over pie dough and the filling from the original...
Fitness | Staying Motivated When You Want to Quit
One of the biggest issues of why many of the population aren’t seeing the results of working out, is because they give up and lose their WHY way too early in the fitness journey. For your body to change, you need to be consistent...
The Mountain Gardener | A Christmas Poem
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the garden,The creatures were stirring, the deer got a pardon. The hummingbird feeders were hung by the chimney with care,In hopes that the Anna's soon would be there.
The flowering cherries were nestled all snug in their beds,While...
News Briefs | Published Sept. 12, 2025
Fun run, emergency preparedness fair set for Saturday
On Saturday, Sept. 13, the City of Santa Cruz will be hosting Race the Wave, a 3K...