In the nick of time...

Alex securing a vine to the wire trellis

Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day in the vineyard pruning vines and training them onto the trellises again. There were branches down throughout the vineyard from the strong winds on Saturday. There had been vigorous growth, and many of the vines would need to be tied on as their weight would be a problem in the strong winds forecast for tonight. My problem was that I am too short to reach many of the canes, nor can I reach many of the wires to tie them on. 

Today, Alex started on the vines, including pruning, tying, replacing broken poles and pulling weeds from around the plants. I came out with him after lunch and tied what I could, starting with the Chardonnay and Pinot noir, which are still short compared with the Solaris. 

It was already blowing pretty hard, and we had only until 4 pm when the heavy rain was to arrive. We had to skip pulling weeds and pruning. We just managed to tie up all the heavy loose branches when the weather turned. Let's hope we did enough. It is forecast to be gusting into the 40s. Better than yesterday's forecast which showed gusts over 50 knots. 

Interestingly, as I started pulling weeds from around the baby Rondo vines planted this year, I noticed that two of them had two bunches of grapes forming each. Astonishing. I had to stop pulling weeds halfway and join Alex in tying up because the weather was turning so quickly. Just as predicted, it started raining heavily at 4 pm. So here I am documenting the case of the June Bank Holiday rush to secure the vineyard before the storm. 

See the baby grape clusters?

This lovely grape cluster is readily visible. 

Much tidier

Even the roses got tied up this week. 

PS It's gusting over 55 knots!