A Toast to this Season’s Harvest Pairing Wine
with Vegetables

I'm an unabashed vegetable lover and even on Thanksgiving, meat is just an accompaniment to my veggies. This year, instead of matching your wine to your Turkey, choose a variety that will bring out the best in the vegetables you grew and stored for the harvest festival. Here's a cheat sheet from The Wine Guide by Williams-Sonoma and more in depth pairings from the San Fransisco Chronicle for pairing wine with everything from avocados to zucchini. Here are a couple of starter tips:

1. Wine pairs better with cooked vegetables than with raw vegetables
2. Roasted and charred vegetables pick up the tannins in red wine

Photo: © Marie Iannott

A Toast to this Season’s Harvest Pairing Wine with Vegetables originally appeared on About.com Gardening on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 01:01:30.

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Stapeliads

The Winston-Salem Journal wrote about rotting-flesh smelling flowers for Halloween, and ended up with the wrong caption for their photo of a stapeliad.

The giant saguaro cactus in Arizona is pollinated mostly by bats.

However, the text of the article did include this.

I was once seduced by a plant of Stapelia gigantea called zebra flower for its wildly striped flowers. I bought it because I was attracted to the huge bud it had formed, easily the size of my hand. It opened the next day, sending an awful stench through the house. Out the door and into the yard it went, where it was soon covered by a swarm of flies. It is a nasty pollination strategy, but it works.

That would have made a better caption.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, here’s the photo in question.

It’s not S. gigantea, but at least it’s related.

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Fire Sticks

Euphorbia tirucallii

Other common names include Pencil Cactus and Milk Tree.

Interesting thing about this plant. It seems that in the 7 years we’ve been open, I’ve never photographed it. Now I have. Good times.

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Tickled Pink

This Dahlia has been growing beneath the Sambuca Nigra shrub, and is blooming away now. Despite the cold weather and incessant rain it has grown into a beautiful pink bloom. The garden is starting to close down, ready for its winter slumber.

The flower is so heavy that it hangs down. I had to hold it up to photograph it. This is only the Second Dahlia bloom this year. There was a single Crimson one before, but this plant has arrived fashionably late to the Summer party.
The bird feeders have been topped up, and the fresh water changed. I hope that when the garden sleeps I will be able to watch the feathered garden birds feeding, singing, and flying around our garden.
The Squirrel has been back several times, and does good acrobatic feats of holding on upside down to feed on the bird feeder station.
The Hedgehogs have gone to sleep now. I have not seen them since before we went to London. I keep hearing strange bird noises at night. I wander if there are Owls living in the trees around the many gardens. I have not seen them yet..
When it finally drys off I have hundreds of Tulips to plant. They are sat in the greenhouse at the moment waiting for a good time to plant them. The Crocuses have already started to push up through the damp soil.
I want more Dahlias for next year, in a variety of colours to add some party magic to the borders.

Read The Full Article:
http://snappycrocsgarden.blogspot.com/2009/11/tickled-pink.html

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