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As spring turns to summer the Monterey Bay and its fish are also in transition. The great start to salmon fishing has taken a serious turn as anglers seek other species.

Lots of teachers inspire by opening the door to learning new things.  Some special teachers with how they approach their craft can inspire and enrich their charges years after the final school bell has run. One of these for me, and thousands others, was San Lorenzo Valley High’s Lee Overbeck, who died Wednesday from leukemia.

“Five gallons of soup”, my Hubby Norm yelled, “five gallons of soup?…Colly this time you’ve gone too far!” he kept repeating as I lugged in twenty pounds   of Cremini mushrooms packed in five pound cartons.  Next came twenty-two quarts of chicken stock, cream and onions and finally, the bottle of sherry wine that it would take to create the Santa Cruz Mountains Gourmet Dinner Club’s Rustic Cream of Mushroom Soup.

I hike in the Bonny Doon Ecological reserve quite often but had never seen the waterfall. Since the Martin fire in 2008 I have written several columns about the remarkable comeback nature can make after a natural catastrophe. Each spring I eagerly await the new growth of manzanita, chinquapin, pine and the spring flower display. Recently I joined a group led by botanist and revegetation specialist Val Haley, who has been a volunteer at the reserve since 1993 and knows just about everything there is to know about this unique place on the planet.