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Rosés are the perfect hot-weather sippers and a nice alternative to chardonnay. They range from sweet-tart to bone dry, with the acidity of a white wine and the fruit flavors of a red—it’s a happy medium between the two.Looking like summer in a glass, rosé wines come in gorgeous hues such as salmon, coral and hot pink. Grapes are lightly crushed and left to soak in their red skins for a limited number of hours—depending on how dark the winemaker wants the color of the finished wine to be. Rosé wine can be made from any grape varietal.Guglielmo Winery chooses grignolino, a red Italian grape, to make their dry rosé. The 2015 Grignolino Rosé ($18) has cranberry flavors and a crisp, green apple finish.This rosé will stand up to the big flavors of a pasta marinara dinner.Pietra Santa makes their 2012 Rosato ($15) from cabernet grapes. It’s a crisp, dry rosé fermented in stainless steel with fresh flavors of pomegranate and wild strawberries. I would pair this wine with a blackened salmon salad or roast chicken.Made from sangiovese grapes, Vino Roseo di Sangiovese 2015 ($25) from Solis Winery is a lightly sweet rosé with well-balanced acidity. It’s a brilliant pink with flavors of strawberry and mango—ideal with spicy cuisine such as Thai or Mexican food.These wines pair well with most summer fare such as chicken salad or a charcuterie board filled with salami, cheeses and olives.

In talking about property inspections, many homebuyers are familiar with inspections related to the appraisal of a home. That is for valuation and marketability purposes, and to validate your purchase price to the lender. But as buyers of a home, there are other inspection events that are important and critical.

Outside Mullingar is a charming offering by the renowned TheatreWorks Company and loaded with award-winning actors, director and playwright. You can’t blink without looking at a prize winner from a Nobel to Oscars, Tonys and you can throw in a Lifetime achievement award. It’s never a question of “will it be “good?” You know if it’s TheatreWorks it WILL be good. So it is with Outside Mullingar, a captivating moment spent on an Irish farm with all of its humor, sadness and life decisions.

When Paramvir Dhillon and his wife, Dolores came across a vacant ice cream shop in a shopping center off Dunne and Monterey in Morgan Hill last summer, they knew they had found the perfect location for their ice cream and treat shop.

Recently featured in Vanity Fair’s hallowed fashion pages for his stunning braids on OG celebutant, Paris Hilton, who sported the heat-resistant hairdo for two weeks at Burning Man this summer, Dylan is living his dream, jetting from red carpets to photo shoots in exotic locations, and, he says, it all started in Gilroy.

The other day I came to a horrible realization that I, a person who felt young (and even more importantly, felt I looked young), was actually, in fact a person approaching middle age. Well, maybe “approaching” is the wrong word. Oh what the heck, I may as well put it out there. I am middle-aged. And it’s scary. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.First, there’s gravity. One day, you put on a pair of shorts or a swimsuit and you realize that many of your original parts are not in their original places. They are … lower. And not as firm. And very jiggly. And it’s not the ’70s TV show kind of jiggly either. It’s a jiggly that only happens when things fall down and can’t get back up.If all those jiggly bits aren’t bad enough, there’s gray hair. I swear to you, one day you have fresh highlights and a good push up bra and all’s right with the world. The next day, you wake up looking like a before photo in a Grecian Formula ad. Why does gray hair do that? And how does it do that? And why on earth can’t I cover this stuff up? I have tried and tried and it still comes back.And it’s not just gray hair that happens overnight. If eyes are the windows to my soul, then my soul is telling me I’m old and I can’t read any fine print. Suddenly, I’m squinting as hard as I can to read the expiration date on my yogurt and it’s still blurry as heck. And I can’t hold it far away either because apparently I have freakishly short Tyrannosaurus Rex arms. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.Of course, there was an easy fix for my eye issues. I just adjusted the fonts on all my electronics and ignored any and all expiration dates on yogurt. That completely solved the problem for about 15 minutes, until I had to read the menu at a restaurant. Clearly I had no choice but to wear reading glasses.I’m telling you, the day I bought my first readers was a horrible day. My parents wear readers. My 95-year old grandmother wears readers. Obviously I am too young for readers. But sadly, there I was in Target, trying on the various strengths and testing them by reading the fine print on the nearby allergy medicines—something I haven’t been able to read since 2010.Yeah, I might have been avoiding this middle-aged thing.But I’m not going to feel bad about it. I mean, a week or so ago I went to dinner with friends. And every single one of us needed readers to see the menu. Of course I had forgotten mine. So we played musical readers for a while until everyone selected their dinner.And that’s when I realized something even more horrifying. Not only am I gray and jiggly and unable to see print smaller than 72 point, I am also forgetting things.Curse you, middle age.

The key to any home loan approval is documentation. And the amount of paperwork asked for by lenders these days has never been higher. Tax returns, bank statements, paystubs and 401k statements are just the beginning.

The Fall Passport event is a perfect weekend for any wine lover. For a flat price, wine tasters receive a passport booklet which allows them one visit per winery over the three-day weekend.

My next door neighbor walked out to her backyard one day and noticed a little green plant that was growing out of the rain gutter above her bedroom window. Upon closer inspection, what she actually had was a small tomato plant. “A gutter tomato!” she joked, as she and her son transplanted it into a large pot.After tending to this and several other tomato plants, she started to get quite a harvest, which she very generously shared with me.And what does one do when they have an abundance of tomatoes that they need to use up? One makes salsa. Or at least one should, because it is so easy to make and so unbelievably delicious when fresh.

I can feel hints of autumn seeping through the last days of summer. We will have more warm weather, but there is a chill in the morning air, and August took a big bite out our long sunlit days.If you are an immigrant from the northeastern hardwood forests, you will understandably scoff at the notion of fall color in California. In all but a few places, our fall foliage is a timid version of eastern forest fireworks. It is a subtle beauty, but beauty nonetheless.Surely, our local wineries have the best fall color in the area.  But if you prefer to explore the back roads and the trails, look for sycamore, big leaf maple, white alder, and Fremont cottonwood. These trees prefer a home along streams, often interspersed among conifers and other evergreens. So, we rarely see them in pure stands. Instead, they scatter flashes of yellow here and there amidst the still-green creekside forests.The sycamore trees in Coe Park's Hunting Hollow seem to have a knack for autumn elegance. Perhaps it is the wisps of lichen dangling from the branches or the way streaks of sunshine backlight the leaves against a shaded background. They seem to have a special glow. Just steps into the hollow, look for one trailside monarch that steals the show. As if thumbing its nose at the law of gravity, a massive trunk rises six feet before making a ninety degree turn from vertical to horizontal. What keeps this tubby trunk from falling? It brings to mind an Olympic gymnast holding the iron cross on the rings—continuously. The strain must be excruciating.I have three favorite spots along the Coyote Creek bike path between Morgan Hill and San Jose where I can step into the riparian forest and forget that Highway 101 is just steps away. Sycamores and cottonwoods light up the trail near the bridge just a short walk from the trail's bottom end in northwest Morgan Hill. A rarely visited spot is at the end of Burnett Avenue beyond Sobrato High School. Farther north, park in the lot just beyond Metcalf Road and walk back toward Coyote Ranch. From each of these spots, you can step into a dome of color.Above the creeks and cascades at Uvas Canyon County Park, the autumn color of bigleaf maples and sycamores light up an otherwise dark and shaded forest. Even along the road to the park, maples and white alders decorate Uvas Creek in a way that invariably pulls me to the side of the road and out of the car.Like the road to Uvas Canyon County Park, Hecker Pass Highway climbs the same Santa Cruz Mountains through stands of bigleaf maple that make simply getting to Mount Madonna County Park a great fall experience. Once you reach the park, look for more color on the Blackhawk Trail.Let your New England refugee friends brag about the fall colors they left behind. Winter is next, and they never brag about that.