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Warm days, short days, cold days and hopefully rainy days—all in the fall of the year here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It’s part of what makes our area so special to us. We are inspired by Mother Nature and our mountains. We feel...

Holidays are here with busy schedules of social gatherings and celebrations. This time of year can make keeping your fitness routine and clean eating habits seem much more difficult. Even the most disciplined people can find it difficult to stick to their health and...

Think of how much time in a day you spend sitting? You sit in your car to and from work. You sit at your desk working the majority of the time. Then you come home and sit down to relax. Did you know that...

When my bearded iris didn’t bloom much this year, I made a note to divide them in September. It’s on my to-do list. These iris are very special to me as I dug them up the spring after my house burned. One is the...

Even though my kids are all-grown-up, nothing pleases me more than hearing them tell me how much they love my cooking, and often they will comment on the food they are eating, food that tastes “just like Grandma used to make.” Grandma Anna, my mother-in-law,...

Eggplant, that beautiful egg-shaped, purple and glossy fruit we order in a restaurant under the name of Eggplant Parmesan, so often comes to us overcooked, bitter and lackluster for want of proper preparation, we are sorry we had not ordered a different entrée. Now that...

While pouring the dark, thick and very sticky molasses from its bottle this morning, I thought about the people who drowned during the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, one hundred and five years ago. On the docks of Boston Harbor, Purity Distilling company had...

Here’s the truth: Saying no is hard. Saying “no” can feel like an impossible task for many people. Whether it’s turning down a request for a favor, declining an invitation or setting a boundary, the act of saying no often brings with it a whole...

It happened last Sunday morning at 2am. That’s when daylight saving time ended and clocks went back an hour. Sure I got an extra hour sleep, but the end of daylight saving time signals to me that autumn is really here in our mild...

This month, the voters of the Scotts Valley Fire District will be asked whether to invest $22.2 million into a new fire station and multipurpose administration/disaster support building to improve community safety. The District currently operates out of two fire stations: the 22-year-old Glenwood...