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.

Re-purposing

Isn't everybody doing this now?

It's easy to think of reasons to do it ranging from the environmental to the creative.

Why wouldn't you do it?

Those reasons range from being lazy to too busy.

Results of a "wine cork art" Internet search can lead you to some very ambitious re-purposers' very ambitious projects.

Portraits, letters, pieces of art, globes, picture frames, bird houses, wreaths ...

Maybe I'm a little bit too lazy and a little bit too busy with my wine gardening - otherwise known as a passive re-purposer.

But even passive re-purposers can create interesting objects.

This is one of my favorites.

A big empty jar, a little paint, a few (hundred) corks and voila — re-purposed art for a bar or kitchen.

Consider a collection of interesting bottles filled with wine corks to keep the big red wine jug company.

A crate and an old label can give a wine bottle an official winery look.

Fill it with corks and it looks even more official. 

Corks can be added to bottles of all shapes and sizes. 

  

Another reason to re-purpose: It gives you something else to contemplate as you're enjoying a nice glass of wine on a nice summer evening.

The original gardening apps

Before there were mobile apps, smartphones, kindles or computers, there were books.

There were no passwords, downloads, directories or folders.

They were stored on shelves or in stacks on tables or sitting on the floor around the room. 

Some books came in collections — remember encyclopedias, the original Internet search? You can only find them at flea markets and garage sales these days.

Some books are bigger than a tablet and have incredible pictures, most likely taken with cameras loaded with Kodachrome film. 

Pictures of gardens from all over the world.

I have books written by experts like Neil Sperry and by authors that just like to assemble pictures or collections with a vintage look like Susan Waggoner.

Aside from general gardening or picture books, there are some very useful old books on specific plants and gardening techniques.

Forcing is one that gardeners with no yard, no deck, no patio can use — you can pick up bulbs at your local nursery and even an amateur can work magic in a small vase.

Today, knock-out roses are very popular. And why wouldn't they be? They're easy to grow and seem to be much less susceptible to diseases and require less maintenance than other rose varieties. If you have the time, roses are a great addition to any garden.

Better Homes and Gardens has built a media powerhouse to serve people who like to spend time decorating their homes and designing their gardens.

Better Homes and Gardens is one of the few gardening publications still around.

These two were once my favorites, but they're out of print now.

A lot of people think all magazines and books will share that same fate at some point in the near future.

The same fate as encyclopedias, cameras, kodachrome and heirloom roses.

Maybe they're right.  

But I still enjoy all those nice bright colors and the greens of summers that makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah!

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.