I swear, I'm not a lush.

Several weeks ago Mark and I bottled our wine. It's not until you put several months' worth of empty wine bottles in one place that you realize how quickly a glass or two a couple of nights a week adds up. Oops. Wine is good for you, right? Antioxidants and such?

After siphoning the wine into the bottles we got to put our corker to use. I was a bit skeptical, but it worked perfectly...and was oddly satisfying.   :)

Of course, I had to taste-test the end result.  

Grand total: 28 bottles, plus one rather full glass. It turned out really well! It's a bit sweet, which is what I've been favoring lately. They recommend waiting three to six months before opening the bottles as the wine goes through bottle shock and needs some time to settle down, but I figure shortly after the Fourth of July I'll be able to try the first one.

After having a few trees and stumps removed last month, we were left with several large dirt patches in the front yard. I was getting a bit tired of looking at them (and was also a bit jealous of my neighbor's beautiful yard), so we went to the local nursery and Lowe's and wound up with...

...this! I had noticed that a rose bush I recently bought was not, in fact, dead, and needed a place to plant it (you can just make it out as that bare stick in the front left part of the bed), and rather than let it be lonely in the dirt patch, figured it would go well with a Japanese Maple and a few smaller plants. I like this much better than plain dirt!  :)