Baby It's Cold Outside

Time to think about bulbs and spring plantings...

Winter kills

There’s still a couple weeks before the official start of winter, but the signs are already in the air, like early morning chills and occasional light to heavy freezes.  

These things aren't a problem for those who are prepared to let their garden sleep until spring.

Most of my garden is filled with perenials that will sleep through the winter and re-appear in the spring. Other annuals that I’ve added for color or variety I allow to wither and return to the ground they come from — I’ll add some new ones next spring & summer.

But then I have a lot of pots full of sensitive plants intended for other warmer climates, some of which I’ve had for years, and though it’s a lot of work to prepare them for winter, it’s worth it.

Those I have already begun to protect by overwintering.

My plumerias & Madagascar palms have been hauled off to the storage space.

Others, like my agaves and sago palms,

I’m covering with “plankets.” A few I’ve had success with by bringing them into the house, like my desert roses.

And my crazy cactus.

I don’t know the real name for the cactus. Its arms grow in all directions.

I picked it up at a local flea market and the seller didn’t know much about it.

By the beginning of December, I’m ready for a break.

After the hauling, moving and covering to prepare my pots, I hope my plants are ready for their long winter naps.

A truly scary thought indeed

A global wine shortage might soon be upon us.

While you're drinking your witch's brew and watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" today, be sincerely thankful for the wine you have in your cellar.

Last year saw the biggest shortfall in global wine supply in almost 50 years.

The United States and China have been drinking more, but the global production has not been keeping pace.

Linus has more on his mind than whether the Great Pumpkin will show up.

But there's good news! Global wine production for 2013 is projected to rise to the highest it's been in seven years. Although it takes more than one good harvest to boost the reserves, the situation is not dire enough to start hoarding bottles.

But you could keep that bathtub wine recipe handy just in case ...

IT'S THE ATTACK OF THE HALLOWINES!

The zombies will be having fun once this party has begun because the selection of Halloween wines seems to grow every year.

 

Pinot, merlot, chardonnay, malbec — they're all there. Paired with a peanut butter cup, popcorn ball or candy apple, it's the perfect Halloween treat.

The bottles also double as spooky decorations.

Add a creepy stopper and classic napkins to complete the eerie site.

 

If wine isn't your cup of brew, there are other options ... like tequila. Wine drinkers must exercise caution with this option or before they know it they'll be doing the Transylvania twist.

And these bottles are too cool to discard when empty — they are meant to be boxed up with other Halloween decorations in November and recycled year after year.

With the growing season winding down, mums and succulents are still great options for pots to greet those trick-or-treaters on the front porch.

And when you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you ...

The Wine Gardener visits The Wine Garden

Fall means cooler weather, fairs, fried foods, and now wine gardens.
 

I might have missed it in the past, but Sunday on a visit to the State Fair of Texas, I found
it. The weather was nice — perfect for relaxing outside and taking a load off your feet while
you watch your favorite football team beat the Philadelphia Eagles on the big screen.
 

In addition to Texas wines, the garden sold craft beers from around the state. Vendors
also sold cheese plates to nosh on while drinking your wine.
 

My favorite wine from the garden was a merlot from a winery in the Red River Valley in
St. Joe, Texas.
Blue Ostrich Winery and Vineyard was, for many years, one of the foremost ostrich
breeding and ranching facilities in the southwest. The structure that contains the
winery, tasting room and offices was once filled with ostrich eggs. In the 1980s and
90s, hundreds of ostrich roamed on the property.
 

Another wine I enjoyed in the garden was a "Super Texan," which is a dry mediumbodied
Sangiovese blend from Flat Creek Estate in Marble Falls, Texas.

On the fence? The wine garden offered taste tests before committing to the full glass.

The Texas state fair is known for its fried food. Hundreds of vendors serve up creative concoctions, all battered and tossed in the deep fryer.
 

Some foods are larger than life. And look like something Fred Flinstone would enjoy.

If you're drinking red wine, I suggest the fried Cuban roll, which is pork shoulder, ham, swiss cheese and special sauce rolled up in pastry dough, fried. 

If you like white, try the fried Thanksgiving, which is stuffing, turkey and cream corn fried. The Texas Fireball, which is pimiento cheese, pickles, cayenne pepper and bacon, covered in jalapeno-infused batter and fried, would also do well with a crisp white.
  

You have better chances winning the Powerball than winning a ring toss, according to one fair employee.

When you're done in the wine garden and you've had your fill of fried food, don't forget
to stop by the Midway — you might get lucky and win an electric guitar.

Wine Wednesday: Craft edition

Recently, I was walking through one of those home décor stores and saw an interesting wall decoration. 

Metal letters, pre-boarding.

Metal letters were secured on wooden bread boards and hung behind a display. 

The items that aren't for sale are sometimes the most interesting items in a store.

That got me thinking — I could make letter boards of my own. 

While I was wandering the fields of Warrenton earlier this month at the Round Top Antiques Fair, I stumbled upon bread boards. 

Around the corner was a booth selling metal letters.

Staging the craft.

I used small nails to secure the letters to the boards. I think they turned out nicely.

Wine-infused antique hunt

This past weekend, the Round Top Antiques Fair wrapped up its fall show in and around Round Top, Texas. The government is shut down, but this show always goes on. 

I found a few things I liked. 

On Saturday, I came across a booth in a field between Warrenton and Round Top that was peddling a unique product. Wine bottles house wine-infused candles, handmade in South Carolina by Rewined Candles.

 

I found another treasure in a field nearby that is an example of the ingenuity inspired by this show.

 

Do you have an industrial chemical carrier that you're not using right now? You can put some wine in it!

The weather held up for the most part and there were so many people at the fair — it seems like there are more and more people each time I go.

I can't wait until April.

Fermented fair fare

Today is the opening day of the State Fair of Texas. Indeed, a new and improved Big Tex was unveiled Thursday.

Big Tex 2.0. c/o Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

 

As our part of the world begins the slow change of the seasons, the fair highlights all the best elements of the transition. We can walk around outside (for the most part) without breaking buckets of sweat. We can listen to a football game while we miss every milk bottle we aim at. We can climb inside shiny new cars. And, most importantly, we can eat. 

In addition to the flambéd jalapeño butter popper biscuit and the like, it's important to appreciate the staples. Corn dogs, kettle corn and an ice-cold root beer are normally all I need to enjoy my fair outing. 

You know what's missing from that mighty triumvirate? Wine, of course.

Populence Popcorn Artisans in New York City found a way for us all to combine a fall classic with an everyday classic: red wine kettle corn.  

While you're at the fair

Wine gardening has hit the big time. 

During this year's fair, which runs until Oct. 20, visitors can spend time at a wine garden at Fair Park. You can drop the kids with your mother-in-law at the children's barnyard and mosey on over to enjoy a glass of wine while you digest your fried Thanksgiving dinner.

Hope to see y'all there.

National Waffle Week

It's National Waffle week ... but you already knew that. 

Waffle House is celebrating its 55th anniversary during this year's National Waffle Week. Wine and waffles go together like peanut butter and mayonnaise. Who hasn't had a few glasses of wine before making a late-night run to the Waffle House? 

Traditionally, breakfast foods are paired with a lighter wine ... maybe a sparkling wine in a mimosa. Or a chilled white wine. But smothered and covered hash browns with a waffle and butter pair well with almost any kind of wine.

Grow your own ... wine

Making your own wine can be an involved, messy affair. 

Just ask Lucy.

But one Dutch designer turns wine-making into a work of art — something stylish enough to display in your home. 

Sabine Marcelis' wine-making kit comes with a pair of glass vessels, a brass stand, tubing, testing and corking supplies.

It's like a chemistry set for adults.

Pots for every occasion

There are some pots that I've owned for years.

I buy them out of necessity — when I've picked up a plant and don't have anything on hand that I can recycle at the moment, many of those are just blah pots because I'm in a hurry to get the plant potted and situated in its place on my patio.

I buy them because I just like the pot and don't have a particular plant tagged to call it home.
 


Sometimes I buy the container not knowing exactly what I'm going to use it for, plants or otherwise.
 


That's how it was with this Hungarian baby bath.

I originally thought I would put it in my garden with my birdhouses and bottle trees. Maybe I would fill it with ice and drinks when I had company since it has a convenient drain for the ice that melts.


But I've ended up using it as a seasonal plant container.
 
It sits on my patio and right now — I have these great ferns in it.



Once it gets cold, I'll have to move the ferns inside, but the bathtub will stay.
 
In October, I'll put some yellow or white mums out to welcome the trick-or-treaters.
 
In the winter, I fill it with pansies.
 
If you use big container plants, you can just drop them right in and lift them right out when you're ready for something different.
 


If I get tired of changing the plants out, I still have the option to ditch the plants and fill it with ice and drinks  or —
 

cover it and use it as a serving table or —


just sit it in the garden with the bird houses and bottle trees. 
 


"He hits from both sides of the plate," Yogi Berra once said. "He’s amphibious."
 


That's the way some containers are — amphibious.

An arcade in the garden

Gardening can sometimes feel like a game. 

It takes skill, effort and a time commitment — watching a plant grow, knowing that you've successfully balanced all of nature's variables, feels like a victory. Kind of like hitting the 3x multiplier on a pinball machine. 

Remember pinball? 

Gottlieb made the King Kool pinball
machine in the 1970s.

Back in a time before each child had a handheld game system, cellphone or iPad in his hand, kids used to pack arcades to spend some quality time with giant light-up machines, playing against their friends or  just against the machine to get the highest score. 

My favorite game was King Kool. The psychedelic Medieval theme was, well, cool. I could spend hours in a dark arcade, watching the flippers fling the ball across the backglass, the board lighting up as my score soared higher. A game of skill! the board exclaimed. Skill, indeed. 

These days, my skills are more natural. I've traded my hours inside for some quality time outdoors, but I can still spend hours in a dark place, since many of my favorite plants grow best in the shade. 

Nowadays, there's a new king of cool in my life — the king kong coleus. 

King kong coleus likes the shade,
similar to the cool environment of an arcade. 

The Kong rose coleus prefers shade or morning sun that lasts only a few hours and is not as hot as the afternoon sun. In time, they can grow big enough to provide their own shade. 

Now that I'm older, I get more enjoyment from the real life game of gardening. Seeing the results of my hard work in a colorful, healthy garden is a much better reward than bragging rights. And  now I'm old enough to drink wine to celebrate my victories. 

Adult juice boxes — straws optional

Enjoying a glass of wine can be a relaxing, quiet experience. 

But what about when your sister's 2-year-old is wobbling through the den, making a beeline toward your glass of wine?

More convenient packaging for your glass of wine can be helpful in a variety of situations — if you're going to the beach, a sporting event or somewhere that steady footing and a stable, solid surface isn't guaranteed, you need your wine to be in a portable container. 

The Wine Cube is available at Target for just such occasions. 

Cooler than traditional box wines? Check — and much easier to transport.

Cooler than Beatle Juice? Maybe not, but pretty darn close.

Cooler than the wine handbag? Depends — I think men would prefer that option when they've been abandoned in the women's clothing section while their wives are in the dressing room.

I think everyone would prefer this option when they're packing for a trip or hanging out in the backyard playing washers or horseshoes.

The wine headache

During my morning newspaper reading, I came across a story about a vintner that destroyed thousands of gallons of wine because of poor sales in the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reported in its Monday edition that Australian maker Treasury Wine Estates Ltd. had to destroy $145 million worth of wine that was past its prime.

They poured out what?

The first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was John Belushi kicking a car in the parking lot of the Delta frat house as Dean Wormer’s henchmen empty the contents of the house and drop a case of Jack Daniels, breaking all the whiskey bottles.

But in this case they’re breaking more than 45 million bottles —  aaaaggghhhhh!

Is this really necessary? Think of all the thirsty people in the world.

There are day-old bakery shelves – where are the 10 year old wine bins?

Mark the price down to cost and let me take my chances – I’ll even sign a waiver if they want me to.

They should partner with Harry and David and get a package deal going with cheese, crackers and deli meats nearing expiration.

Wineries have marketing people, don’t they?

Maybe they need to hire some new ones before the next 45 million bottle breakdown occurs.

More money, more wine: Alternative economic indicators

This week, The Wall Street Journal talked with Ray Isle, executive wine editor at Food and Wine magazine, about the economic state of the wine industry.

"People always drink," Isle says. "But they adjust what they're going to spend based on the economy."

As the economy continues to recover from the Great Recession, wine tastes evolve. People are spending more on wine — the $10-$20 a bottle segment of the market saw an increase of 8.2 percent in the last year (April 2011-April 2012, the latest figures available). The $20+ a bottle segment increased by 17 percent.

But who is buying $20 wine?

In general, wine purchasing skews toward the older, wealthier segment of the population. Indeed, Isle says, baby boomers are the biggest consumers of wine. They have disposable income and a taste for it.

But to account for the growth, we can look (at least in part) to the millennials. This generation is getting into wine, which improved sales.

Martin Truex Jr. raises a glass of wine after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup series auto race June 23 in Sonoma, Calif. Millennials like Truex, born in 1980, have gotten into wine, accounting for part of the industry's growth. (Photo by Eric Risberg / The Associated Press)

The most popular category is still in the $6 a bottle zone. California's top five producers — Kendall Jackson, Cupcake, Menage a Trois, Bogle and Clos du Bois — make wines in this price range and are enormously popular.

Also enormously popular among the top five American distributors? Buying in bulk from around the world, especially South America. It's common for these large companies to ship in foreign wine, like a Malbec from Argentina, and bottle it.

Watch The Wall Street Journal video here.

Re-purposing: Part Deux

What do you do with your empty bottles?

You can put them in the recycle bin on the curb for pick-up — they'll put them to good use and it's better than contributing them to the local landfill.

But what will the neighbors think? 

I read a story recently about concerned wine drinkers who would drive around the neighborhood and "share" their empties with their neighbors' recycle bins after dark to avoid potential suspicions about their imbibing patterns. 

Don't waste your gas — there are many other, more practical ways to use those empties.

Bottle trees are on option. 

I have some that have a variety of bottle types planted on them.

I've made some bottle bushes by jamming pieces of rebar in the ground and planting different bottles on each rebar stem.

Some bottle trees hang like a plant from a beam outside.

My favorite bottle tree is a metal arch.

I picked it up at a flea market and I've covered it with blue and green bottles.

Remember — your plants get thirsty, too.

Poke a hole in a cork, fill one of your empties with with water, then return the cork to the bottle and place the bottle cork first into one of your plants. 

It's both decorative and useful. Thirsty plants will appreciate the time-release refreshment.

But at some point, you'll have to explain to your neighbors why your plants drink so much.