Honestly I find the more I remove myself from the care of my plants the better they do. I've tried so many things like humidifiers, heaters, grow lights, I even bought a misting system for amphibians and built a glass case for some plants. It all got to time consuming and costly to keep up so finally just went with the room at its normal light, temperature and humidity. I devote one morning a week which is Sunday from 6AM to 9AM to watering, if I have time I water a few plants again on Wednesday. I use a pump sprayer to water so I can control the water flow. I like to spray a small amount of water over a longer period of time instead of dumping water into the pot and having it spill right out the bottom. I feel this gives more time to let the roots soak up water. For plants in standard pots I will even put my finger over the drainage hole for a minute to be sure everything is saturated. MOunted plants and plants in baskets I will soak in a bucket of water for 5 minutes or so. You have to change the water between plants to prevent spreading bugs or disease. I use the waste water for my dirt plants. For plants that don't like to be dry I use semi hydroponic pots with hydroton as a media, I also have switched some plants to hydroton as the media in regular pots. Sometimes its hard to find good potting bark, I find a lot of places store their potting media outside where it gets wet and breaks down so if the bag isn't clear I don't buy it. As for suggestions on fragrant plants I like Zygopetalums are great, the scent can fill the room. I like the BLC Tangs and LC love knot are good because the bloom a few times a year. Brassavola Nodosa and Angracums are nice because they are fragrant at night. Check out the Oakhill gardens site. They have a list of fragrant plants , I also see they have a Angracum Sesquipedale in seedling size. Good luck

yet another vote for clothesline. In the 8 years since we moved in, the gas dryer has seen action only when the weather did not permit air drying (a few times in December, January and February - N. California weather). There was never any issue with dirt, bird poop or pollen with air drying, but the lines are strung in a patio mostly surrounded by walls and a fence. I do have a grapevine canopy partially covering the area though, but it does not cause any issue either. Since all our laundry is air dried, we would have needed too many racks to do the job; we do have a couple (standard collapsible ones, with the horizontal dowels covered in plastic film) in case there are too many socks and not enough clothespins...

I think lindac is correct. The point of adding wine is essentially to bring in some acidity. You are not going to get the complex flavors of a great wine in your stew - it will be cooked and transformed. That's why great restaurants don't use great wine in their cooking. And if you're doing a reduction, taking a bottle of wine down to maybe a cup, there is no reason to use anything great. That's the reason I suggested something fairly tasteless. For example, if you are cooking some mussels with garlic and shallots and wine, and you were to use a really grassy Sauvignon Blanc from Rueda say, you may find notes of bell pepper and grapefruit, and if you were to use a muscat or gwertztraminier, you would have floral and fruity notes and neither would really be great with the mussels. Sauvignon blanc from the Loire is a classic wine to use in that dish, but most of those, from Sancerre say, do not have the pronounced green flavors that some of the others do. With red wine it's a little more complex because many red wines are aged in wood. That is generally not something that enhances the flavor of a dish. As a matter of fact, whenever someone has done a little study of the issue, the simpler, fruitier wines were preferred. But your information on wine is very mistaken. "Cheap" can result from many factors, which could include the relative strength of the economy where the wine was made. Consequently, we can find bargains in the US that come from Argentina, whereas if their economy were stronger, the wines would be more costly. Lightly tapping grapes to release juice? Each individual grape? I promise you that nobody in the world does that. Some wines are made via carbonic maceration, in which case the weight of the grapes in the container crushes a few and the juice starts fermenting. The grapes at the bottom of the tank start fermenting inside their own skins in some cases. The new Beaujolais is made like this and it's also used in other areas to produce light, fruity wines that aren't meant to age and that are in fact good for cooking. In other cases, the grapes are in fact crushed and allowed to macerate with the skins. The juice is then drawn off. This is what is called "free run" juice. If the mass of skins, etc., is gently pressed, there can be additional juice that is squeezed out. That is no longer free-run juice, but is is not low quality. There are many ways of pressing the skins. For example, you can have an inflatable bladder that gently presses out the remaining juice. Incidentally, one of the wineries that uses this charges over $100 a bottle for their wine. And yes, sometimes the stems and seeds are crushed too. Some winemakers feel that the tannins and flavors that are obtained that way add complexity to the wine. Guigal in the Rhone for example, uses whole cluster fermentation, which means that he does not de-stem the grapes before making wine. Then when the juice is pressed, you get some of the flavors and tannins from the skins and seeds. His la Landonne goes for about $270 a bottle and it's entirely whole cluster fermentation. Dropping 1/3 of the crop is called "green harvesting". in that situation, bunches are cut off while still green so that the remaining clusters ripen more evenly and supposedly have more concentration. People around the world do it and people around the world debate whether or not it's actually useful. The idea is that lower yields produce more concentrated flavors. Well, you can accomplish low yields in many ways, including the density of your planting. But don't assume that all expensive wines are from vineyards that have been green harvested. I assure you that is not true. As far as headaches - that comes from alcohol. Sulfur is present in the grapes themselves as it is a component of some amino acids. THere is no science whatsoever supporting the claim of sulfites causing headaches, although there is an urban legend that won't die. Since I cook almost daily and have been doing so for many years, and since I always have open bottles of wine in the house, we've been cooking with all kinds of wine. I promise you that if I use a white or a red in my spaghetti sauce, you will most likely not know the difference. As far as not drinking it and not cooking with it - that's not a bad rule. However, I would even hedge there. Someone gave me some Yellow Tail shiraz. I certainly wasn't going to drink it but it did make a great marinade with some soy sauce, star anise, ginger, honey, and garlic. Cheers!

The wine will add an underlying flavor to the dish, picking the right wine depends on what the other components of the sauce are. Is the sauce butter/cream and fairly heavy or rich? Use a chardonnay. If it is very heavy, use a chardonnay aged in oak. Is the sauce light and fresh? If it is light and herby, use a sauv blanc, if it is light and fruity, fume blanc or pinot gris. Generally, when recipes say use a wine that you would drink they are trying to discourage using wines specifically bottled as "cooking wines". You can get a decent one for about $7/bottle. If you have leftover wine, you can freeze it in an ice cube tray, pop the cubes and store in the freezer. A good all purpose white wine for cooking is an unoaked (steel) chardonnay. But I never have leftover wine, 'cause I drink it, LOL! Hope this helps.