I'd be happy to help, but my experience is limited. Read a little more and you might find some of it useful. In Chicago, my neighbors and I are working with Neighbor-Space to turn a nearby vacant lot into a community garden. We're still in the planning stages and would like to get something in the ground this year. There are two longtime existing community gardens (run with the help of Neighbor-Space) not far from our plot and our little group has been talking to their leaders, who've been very helpful. You might try talking to them. Frankie Machine Garden - 1800 W. Haddon Ave., Marjorie Isaacson, marjiei@yahoo.com, Greenhouse Garden - 1100 N. Wood St., J.W. Glass, jwglass@bscichicago.com, ph. 312-498-3889, If you want some info on community gardens in the City of Chicago, talk to Margaret Weiner at Neighbor-Space. It's a non-profit citywide agency and she can probably find plenty of other people for you to talk to. They run about 55 community gardens in the city of Chicago and buy or lease the land, provide liability insurance, and provide some basic grant money along with a lot of good connections. info@neighbor-space.org 312-431-9406 Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck. Not that relevant, but check out the 30 homemade earth boxes I put on my garage roof. Here is a link that might be useful: Chicago's Neighbor-Space Organization

I've never seen an 'entertaining' survey before, but I'd be willing to bet that the people who have responded to this one host parties at least 10 times more often than the average person! 1. How often do I entertain? Well, as nigel-bigel said, it depends on how you define it. During the fall and winter, my children (young adults) usually come over for Sunday night suppers with friends in tow. During the spring and summer, the kids usually go to the lake on the weekends, and I send at least one meal for a group of 15-20. In these cases, I guess I'm the hostess 'in absentia'. :) Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinner are all held at my home. We also usually do a holiday party. Then there are family birthday dinners and cook-outs and special meals for my gal pals. So I'd say once every week or two would be a reasonable average. 2. The number of guests ranges from 1 to 75. 3. Guests are always family members and/or good friends. 4. I've hosted two rehearsal dinners in the last year -- one at a fabulous restaurant, and the other at a museum. Other than that, I've never entertained outside my home. (Well, unless you count the fund-raising dinners I've organized...but that wasn't personal entertaining.) 5. Yes, I prepare all the food from scratch. 6. Okay, there is one exception. Fresh Market sells this Cajun crab spread that my family is all addicted to! I often buy it, along with their garlic toast rounds, to serve as an 'instant' appetizer. And, of course, anything a guest brought would be given pride of place. 7. Magazines? Traditional Home, Southern Accents, Southern Living, Cooks' Illustrated, Gourmet. Paula Deen's mag is also good. I used to read Time and Newsweek religiously -- until they turned into propaganda outlets. Now I get my news online.... 8. My style is definitely traditional! The napkins are cloth, the flatware is sterling, and there are always lots of flowers and candles. 9. Invitations are usually issued orally, but there are lots of exceptions. To the r.d.'s, they were engraved, of course. For Halloween, I've sent rubber snakes and bloody 'fingers'. For Easter, I've painted 'cracked' eggs that opened up to reveal a poem. For baby and bridal showers, always! For birthday or anniversary or christening parties involving more than immediate family, definitely. But over the years, way less than 1% of my parties have involved written invitations. 10. The type of food offered varies wildly. Maybe (if you're very lucky) beef tenderloin, with potatoes au gratin and roasted asparagus. Maybe (if you're even luckier) turnip greens and black-eyed peas and cornbread and tomatoes fresh out of my garden. I mostly do Italian, Tex-Mex, and lots of seafood. Oh, and Southern, of course. :) 11. I always offer beer and wine and soft drinks. But I also 'research' my guests' preferences if I don't know them. Basically, there's always a full bar option. 12. Our musical tastes are eclectic, to say the least. Country, classical, old-time rock and roll... 13. The dress isn't necessarily "formal" or "informal". It's just "appropriate", depending on the occasion. I think I must be extraordinarily blessed, because my friends would never show up at a cocktail party wearing jeans or with a child. On the other hand, they'd know instinctively that they could wear shorts and bring their kids to a backyard BBQ. What is so hard about this???

Interesting post. You should put it on some of the wine bulletin boards like Wine Spectator and Mark Squires and Robin Garr's board. But you didn't ask clear enough questions. For example, everyone would want to pay one dollar a month to store hundreds of cases. You might want to rephrase that question - how much would you pay monthly to store a case? Also, a lot of people want direct delivery to their storage from wineries and stores. So you might ask if they want to be notified on delivery arrival and if they want the delivery checked. Those services will be extra, but if you bought futures and they come several years later, you want to be sure that all the bottles are there, not leaking, etc. And temperature is critical. The cooling and backup cooling system are concerns, as is the ability of the recieving dock to notify you if the wine is actually warm when it arrives. I wouldn't want a delivery from an unrefrigerated truck in August. And handling charges are important. Do you want to be able to get a bottle(s) a month or year for no charge, or will you be happy to pay a fee every time you take out a bottle. And if you want deliveries, what kind of advance notice and what kind of fee will you be willing to pay? But geography is most important in your survey and you didn't ask about it. In NYC, where I live, people will pay for every service because if you don't have a car, traveling around or out of the city for a bottle is a waste of your day. Somewhere like Indianapolis, it is a different story - you tend to be driving anyway. So you should tailor your questions to the site you are considering, or ask people to ID where they are answering from because the responses will be meaningless if they address questions that are of no concern in your area. That means in Chicago and NYC, having a doorman take delivery for you might be important, but in places without high rises, that will not be an issue. Anyway, best of luck. My storage facility shut down last summer, and I think there's a market in places like NYC and Chicago.

The survey was really too superficial. It seemed geared to people who shop in supermarkets for wine. That's OK, but they'd have little reason to shop online. The heaviest users of online wine sites are probably people who are looking for specific things that aren't widely available and who are willing to spend a lot of money. So a question like whether the look of the label affects a purchase is entirely meaningless. Nor is there a correlation between the number of times one purchases wine during a month and wine consumption, or a reason to imagine that wine purchases are spread thru the year. Most walk in wine purchases take place in November and December. Online that may or may not be true, depending on whether people are buying for the holidays or not. There's also the problem with shipping and most people don't want shipments May - Sept. Then there's the Bordeaux releases and the Rhone releases. Those months will show a spike in on-line purchases because if people want futures, they'll likely as not buy from someone in NYC, LA, Chicago, or DC.