Your phone can do so much more than connect to Facebook

Cellphones and tablets are inescapable parts of our lives. 

We use them to communicate, to keep our lives organized and to occasionally air our views on the World Wide Web. 

But maybe it's time you do something useful with your phone. Summer is coming and the kids are about to be out of school. Why not organize some activities for you and your family to enjoy outside together? It's a great way to put everyone's free time to good use. 

I've perused the app store to see what apps might be the most helpful. 

Unfortunately, none of these listed below will do the work for you — that's one part of gardening that will never change. 

Garden Master - Gardening Task Manager App

By Building Rainbows Software

$1.99

Are you a Type A personality? 

Organize all your thoughts and don't let your garden tasks fall through the cracks!

Note, track and be reminded of all your gardening projects. 

Bonus: The app has illustrations for all your tasks — an idyllic garden appearance to shoot for!

Gardening: The Ultimate Guide

By 8bittoast, LLC

Free

With this app, you have access to resources about gardening. 

The articles have helpful hints about common mistakes for gardening rookies. 

I haven't had the app for long, but it appears as though these might be the only articles available. 

You can connect via Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to share content you find on the app. 

However, the app does have one useful feature that you can use over and over again — a flashlight. 

There are definitely apps with a more direct route to a flashlight, but this one works surprisingly well. 

These are the results I got
when I took a photo of my
favorite blanket. 

Garden Compass
TeamSOA, Inc.

Free

This is one of the coolest gardening apps I've found. 

It's your garden-variety Shazaam. 

You can take pictures of plants and the app will identify what kind of flower you're looking at. 

Have a real humdinger that the app can't figure out? There's a team of experts you can email through the app who can help you out. 

You can even take a photo of a color or a texture — anything, it doesn't have to be a plant. 

One drawback: The shopping feature didn't work so well for me. 

It told me the nearest nursery was 132 miles away, when I can name several within a five-mile radius. 

Lowe's Creative Ideas Magazine

Free

Interested in home and garden magazine content? 

Not so interested in subscribing to a magazine? Lowe's Creative Ideas Magazine makes all of its issues available on your phone or tablet. 

There are clever ideas and gardening how-tos. 

My favorite one this month is how to keep your lawn hydrated. The summer heat around my neck of the woods can wreak havoc on grass.

Wine Notes

William Lindmeier

Are you having the best wine you've ever had? Make sure to remember it by making a note. 

Wine Notes allows you to take a photo — of the bottle, the glass, whatever you like — and write notes about it. The vintage, country of origin, color, alcohol, etc.

A feature utilized by this wine gardener for his own note-taking purposes is the notes. You make a record of what gardening activity you completed while you were drinking that bottle.

Taking down the notes about the wine for yourself doesn't work in all situations. Maybe you're across the pond at a cozy pub. You don't want to trouble anyone for the information about the wine. In that case, you can use the app Drync. Scan the label and Drync will identify the wine and can provide purchasing options. 

Bottle Garden

Denis Turecek

Free

Combine your two favorite loves, wine and gardening, into a game. 

This is Bottle Garden, but I like to think of it as Winesweeper. 

The goal? Tap on every wine bottle. 

The catch? 

If the bottle you tapped is in the same row as another, the wine will spill, causing you to lose. If the wine hits grapes, you get another bottle of wine. Dig holes so the bottles won't break. Supposedly it helps with the upkeep of your mental agility. 

However, as far as I can tell, this is simply mindless fun. 

Don't drink alone, even if you're by yourself

Drinking wine outside is a timeless summer tradition. 

The weather is warming up, which means it's a good time of year to enjoy a glass of wine and dinner on the patio.

Invite some friends a la George Thorogood to join.

As Rhett advised Scarlett, "Don't drink alone, Scarlett. People always find out, and it ruins the reputation."

A sculpture created by Carruth Studio.

Carruth Studio has a lot of interesting characters.

There are a lot of other random characters you might pick up at a nursery, flea market or garage sale. 

Some can hang out on the fence.

Some are gate keepers.

Some are designed to ward off evil.

Some deliver seed to birds. 

Some have bad habits.

And others just hang out and look pretty.

There's no need to drink alone even if you do prefer to be by yourself.

Remember Mom

Sometimes I think about how popular gardening has become in the past 10 years. 

Local nurseries at one time stocked nothing more than the basics in spring and summer — impatiens, begonias, boxwoods. Most selections were boring.

Now, each season, I look forward to all the new varieties of plants that are sure to appear on the shelves.

Maybe I just wasn't as aware of them as I am now, but succulents are one of the varieties that seem to have appeared on the gardening scene over night. 

I've always liked these because they are very forgiving to those of us with one brown thumb and one green thumb.

Succulents don't mind if you neglect them a little — they require very little water, they love the bright sun and cool or hot weather suits them fine.

The variety available is so expansive it's easy for anyone to assemble an impressive arrangement in a small pot.

Just pick three or four different plants. Different colors provide an appealing contrast when planted in the same pot. Some run over the edge, others stand straight up on stalks. 

Many succulents flower.
If they don't, you can add one. 

This is a plant any Mom would love. They'll last long after the cut roses have wilted, the perfume bottle is empty and the last piece of chocolate candy has been savored.

Local florists and even online vendors offer different assortments of succulents for delivery, so that's always an option if you can't find the time to pull a pot together yourself.

If you have the time to deliver one in person, consider pairing the gift with a nice Chardonnay.

You and your mom can spend time sitting on the patio, enjoying the afternoon, sipping Chardonnay, admiring the new plants and recalling some of your favorite times together. 

It doesn't get any more winegardenery than this

A bottle of wine and a gardening activity — there are other variables that can be introduced, but basic wine gardening at its core is simple.

   

How about this variable: A mandevilla plant named after different types of wine to distinguish the different colors of blooms on the plant. 

I've always liked the mandevilla plant, but it's recently become even more appealing.

I ran across these MandeVino plants last weekend at the Home Depot that's close to my house.

Sangria, rose and cabernet mandevillas.

I've always treated Mandevillas as annuals and have never tried overwintering them.

I have a couple of places I plant them, both on trellises.

One pot I have with a 3 foot iron trellis stuck in dirt works well. I like this one because I can move it around to different places on my patio or in my backyard to add a little color as the growing season progresses and then deteriorates.

Depends on what my kill rate has been by August or September and what I'm able to find at the nursery for replacements in other locations. 

This has generally been a good utility plant.

I have another spot along a fence that serves as a trellis for the vines. 

My experience has been that they grow best if they're positioned to get a few hours of morning sun and avoid the harsher direct afternoon sun, unlike bougainvillea.

I used to think there was some relation between these two because the names sound similar to me (at least when a Southerner pronounces them) but they're two totally different plants.

They're both woody vines, but in my experience, bougainvillea does love as much direct sun as it can get and handles the heat much better. 

I'm going to give these new mandevillas a shot and see how they work out.

And I think that'll be a good excuse to try a wine flight while I'm doing my planting.

A cabernet, a sangria and a rose...