Wednesday Wine Tasting

The wine I am drinking came from Laithwaites Wine Club; it is a 2012, not a 2008.
I really like South American wines, so here goes:
right off the bat = 50
Color is lovely=  5/5
aroma a little weak and heavy on the oak= 7/10
taste, just what I would expect from a malbec and deeper than the aroma suggests= 12/15
finish is really nice, not bitter or icky = 8/10
overall impression based on a ll of the Malbecs I have tried is this is to be expected 7/10
Total =89 points from me

Note: please drink responsibly.  This bottle will take me about a week to finish.  As the week goes on, the wine opens up more and the flavor changes.  I had 1/2 a glass of this yesterday and today's half glass is much smoother.  Let it breathe.

Catching up

Wow, it's been a while.  Life sometimes gets in the way and priorities change.  So, here is an update:

I am still living at the same place.  After 5 years of trying to garden in pottery shards I have decided to truck in dirt.  This spring my garden will have 46 cubic yards of good soil made into permanent beds.  I am shooting for a garden that is 55x55 and using this book to help me get more organized.  My issues with consistence are getting much better, I have seen great improvement over the last two years.  Instead of trying to do it all, I do what I can and my motto is "Do what you don't want to do, then you can do what you want."  My kitchen is cleaner because of it!

A note about the book I am using; it is written by two people who are in a zone 6 / 5 area so if you live in Florida, it is probably not the right book for you.  I live in a zone 4 area, so I have to modify it a bit which is not a problem, but if I lived in a place with 200 or more frost free days I would go nuts trying to make this book work for me.  That said, I really like it.

Today I finished sharpening, cleaning, and oiling my garden tools.  It is too cold and windy to inspect the orchard so I will do that tomorrow.  Yesterday I ordered all of my seeds from Johnny's and I plan on getting more plants when planting time comes.  Here is my garden plan that I tweaked from another book.

sorry it is such a bad photo, I will work on it.
My to youngest are also doing a bag garden from the book so I gave one the 1 year plan and the other the second year addition.  This is a great idea for kids who do not want to spend too much time working on a garden because there is very little weeding and prep involved.

I really like this book and it is fun to use.  I purchased both of them from Amazon after checking them out at the library.