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Dahlia's are liking the uptick in humidity (finally) the last few days. Fingers crossed for some nice rains with no hail!

ibglowin said:

Dahlia's are liking the uptick in humidity (finally) the last few days. Fingers crossed for some nice rains with no hail!

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Send the hail to my house! I need a new roof! ::

LOL

I got one a year ago thanks to the hail!

roger80465 said:

Send the hail to my house! I need a new roof! ::

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ibglowin said:

LOL

I got one a year ago thanks to the hail!

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All my neighbors have gotten roofs in the last couple of years. Mine has been inspected by 3 different companies who said the same thing - old but not damaged. How can that be?

I would argue that all your neighbors have had hail damage and gotten new roofs.

My roof was 25 years old (last year) and literally falling apart. My insurance company sent out an inspector to look at the roof (and all other policy holders in the area) and reported back that it needed replacing. The insurance company sent a letter stating that if I didn't get a new roof they would not renew my insurance policy.

Called up my insurance company (figured what did I have to lose) and said I want to file a claim for hail damage and that all my neighbors have had new roofs replaced in the past year. They sent out an inspector of their choice. He said, "yep you have hail damage" and wrote up the estimate for over $13K.

I have been with my insurance company for 30 years and somehow I didn't have a depreciation rider on the roof so I got a new roof and didn't pay a penny. I had a $250 deductible and the roofer had a coupon for Angie's List for $250 off a new roof.

Of course when my homeowners policy renewed 3 months later I had a new depreciation rider on the roof as well as a 15% increase in my premium.........

Bryan and I just got back from a week's holidays for our 10th wedding anniversary: Blue Mountains near Toronto. Dirt biking, Cave Climbing, Zip Lining, you name it! We had a blast . Perfect way to relax for an adult's only vacation!

A selfie just as your 3 year old knocks over a full carboy....

From my night flowering cactus, couple dozen blooms a year in the heat of the summer. They open after dark and wither and die by 7 AM.

Here is a pic of my night flowering Devil's Trumpet its a Datura. They only last the night but have the most beautiful smell. Have a few in pots and a bunch growing around the garage. And my helper Little One in the back ground.

Dahlias are liking the increased rain and humidity!

Sharing some family memories. Here are some 53-year-old screenshots off Super 8 movies my uncle made, which is why the quality is low. This is how the family was back then, Italian to the core, and many of these folks are no longer with us, even the uncle who shot the movies...

My Grandpa DiIulio, who came here with my Grandma through Ellis Island, makes a toast with his homemade white wine at a family gathering...



My Grandma and Grandpa at another gathering for his birthday in 1963. The room behind the wall that is in back is where all his wine barrels were stored. You went through the curtain at left to get into it.



My Mom hams it up with two bottles of Grandpa's red before serving her parents at Grandpa's birthday, while my Aunt Della moves his cake (homemade by Grandma, of course) into position.



The event was held in their tiny basement, and the room was packed with family. This picture does not do it justice. We used to have these family gatherings at least 4-5 times a year at different relatives' houses. Everybody would bring food.



Grandma and Grandpa at the back door of their little house...



One more shot of the original winemaker, who brought the skill to the US with him from Berea, Italy.



Out of all the closeups, only two people are still living. The family grew larger and our gatherings gradually ceased as the generations expanded, at about the time I graduated from college. Those were good days to grow up.

While your Grandpa was still around, were you at all interested in making wine and did you ever get to see his recipes or talk about his techniques?

Those images brought back some family memories for me, thanks for posting them! Very cool that you still have those.

Can't believe I left Houston, TX for this........ LOL

That looks suspiciously like a downhill skinrun

Would that have anything to do with your migration West?

That is one of the runs on Ski Pajarito here in Los Alamos. The Valle Grande is on the backside. Moved here in 1986 and never left. 4 Seasons, dry mountain air, access to hiking and biking right outside your back door and yes skiing, plenty of skiing.

ceeaton said:

While your Grandpa was still around, were you at all interested in making wine and did you ever get to see his recipes or talk about his techniques?

Those images brought back some family memories for me, thanks for posting them! Very cool that you still have those.

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Glad they brought you memories!

I was too young. Since I got interested in wine, I asked family members about what they recall. I do remember he himself called his red wine a name that has been banned on this forum! LOL. He had a good sense of humor.

No one got his recipes, because he did it all in his head. I have one uncle still living who is 84 and recalled as much as he could. The grapes came from California, ordered through a local grocer. My uncle as a young man had a huge Buick, and they would fill the entire car - trunk, backseat, everywhere - with boxes of grapes.

My uncle said he used Zinfandel and some other red grape. Grandpa had a dedicated pair of boots to stomp the grapes. He made wine once a year, and it was a big production as far as gallons. I think from the descriptions he had to be making at least 50 gallons or so, and I would not be surprised if it wasn't more like 100. That would not be an unusual quantity in an Old World Italian family, where wine is served twice a day, at lunch and dinner.

I still recall Grandpa sitting at the kitchen table for lunch, a small glass of wine set near him. He would eat and take tiny sips all along. The Old World belief was that wine in moderation was restorative. After lunch, he would go back out and work on his garden, which covered nearly the entire back yard. My Grandma canned every single thing out of that garden. Grandpa mowed his grass with a reel mower well up into his late 70s.

Fermentation was natural, which I figure is part of the reason why he could never get good wine out of the local grapes but always had to order from California. The wine was fermented in large upright barrels with one end out, and always stored in large sealed oak barrels in the basement. There were eight large barrels on a rack in the wine room. I do recall seeing them and how they were done. No airlocks, but they had the bung on the up side and the tightness of that is how they were vented.

My uncle said cleaning out the fermentation barrels was always his job, and you could get pretty high just from breathing the fumes.

My Dad helped one or two times, and he said Grandpa was always very fussy about how the wine was drained from the storage barrels for use. He would only put it in bottles just before it was to be used, usually screw-top Mogan David bottles. He was fussy about how the air was allowed into the barrel as the wine drained, and about how much was allowed in, my Dad said. (For obvious reasons.)

My grandpa and his other Italian friends from the Italian neighborhood where he lived would gather at one of their houses, bring their wines, and critique them, my uncle said. They'd share techniques, etc., and so better themselves in winemaking that way as well as getting tipsy and enjoying each other's company.

I used to get a sip of his white wine as a kid, now and then. It was dry and good. I do remember the taste vividly.

My Grandpa's grape press was made from a former letter press that had been used to print fliers and posters. My cousin has it, but it has never been used to press grapes since Grandpa's last batch, which was made around 1967.

My Grandma died in 1968 and he died in 1969, when I was 11.

Many people in modern winemaking diss all this as low-quality crap techniques, but back in those days you did not have mail-order winemaking suppliers and all these chemicals like we do now. I do know I have never been able so far to duplicate the taste of his white wine.

Wow, your question brought back memories for me, too! I owe the images to my deceased Uncle Albert, who always had a Super 8 camera with him when we were kids. In retirement, he compiled them all with his narrative on VHS tape, and then they were played during the visitation at his funeral. Everyone clamored for a copy, so my cousin Bill had DVDs made of the tape. I prize that DVD.

jswordy said:

Glad they brought you memories!


Wow, your question brought back memories for me, too! I owe the images to my deceased Uncle Albert, who always had a Super 8 camera with him when we were kids. In retirement, he compiled them all with his narrative on VHS tape, and then they were played during the visitation at his funeral. Everyone clamored for a copy, so my cousin Bill had DVDs made of the tape. I prize that DVD.

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My Dad took super 8 movies of every family event. My brother who lives about a mile away from me has captured them much as you did those images, he plays them on a screen and records them, then publishes them to DVD. He's doing the same with my Dad's 33 and 78 rpm records.

One of my Grandpas died before I was born. His wife, my Grandma (mom's side) died in the late 60s as well as my paternal Grandpa, heart attack doing the lawn with a push mower. My paternal Grandma lasted into her 90s but looked like a pretzel from all the arthritis.

I have very fond memories of early gatherings when I was less than 10 yrs old, and your images brought that back and actually kept me up last night thinking about them. I need to get better at passing stories I got along to my kids, I'm thinking of doing informal recordings that they can play for the great grandkids I will never get to meet. And part of those recordings will hopefully help them make some wine if they are interested.

Jim, great stuff and I really appreciate the lengthy post.

Hamilton Pool in Dripping Springs, TX. Visited there on Tuesday.

ibglowin said:

Can't believe I left Houston, TX for this........ LOL

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I'm a born and raised Texan (lived there for over 30+ years) and I would have left Houston just because!

LOL So am I. San Antonio but moved to Houston for first job post UGS. Just never fell in love with Houston. Could be it's like living in a hot wet sauna for 9 months of the year, then its a cool wet sauna for 3 months of the year.

dcbrown73 said:

I'm a born and raised Texan (lived there for over 30+ years) and I would have left Houston just because!

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