See the USA...

Rondo bud break

We took our first trip to the US in several years last week. Bizarre travelling again. Just 7 days but packed with activities, including renewing my US driving license, fixing a bank account's data and seeing the cherry trees in bloom in DC. 

Upon return, one of the first things I did was water in the polytunnel and check the vineyard. I was astounded at the changes since we left, despite some rather cold and blustery weather, with F11 wind last night. We flew in with 40-knot gusts buffeting the place but the pilots did very well. 

Bud burst with the Rondo is well underway. The Solaris is slightly behind, with the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir trailing well behind and the Albarino looking sickly. 

Solaris

Chardonnay

Pinot Noir

Albarino, but it's the only one

The fruit trees are well underway to flowering and leafing. Let the Spring begin. 

Cherry blossoms in the USA capital, Washington DC.

Brrrrr, the big chill has arrived

Sunset today - so early. This was at 4:17.

Until today, November has been exceedingly mild. The mean temperature was 10.3 degrees for the month through the 20th, which is more than a degree warmer than last year. Last year at 9.1C was 2 degrees warmer than 2019 and a degree warmer than the prior two years (8.3C). Lots of flowers have been blooming right through the month, including amazing roses. Bees have been flying right through to this morning. Alex put up a lovely gate to the Apiary and made a cute sign for it.

This afternoon, it turned bitterly cold. We are to have about a week of arctic chill and Friday we will have a gale. They are saying that it may drop below zero at night but as there is no precipitation in the forecast until Wednesday at the earliest, there is little likelihood of snow. We will have little cloud cover so we may yet get frost. That would be welcome as it might kill off some of the pests and coax everything into dormancy. 

It was a beautiful Autumn, with lots of colour. Most of the leaves have now dropped, the donkeys are in the barn, and the sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular. But we did not get to see the lunar eclipse as there was too much cloud cover. We even had enough leaves remaining that we had to rake them today. 

The wine is doing well; the bubbling has slowed down. Time to rack the white in particular. The yeast has settled nicely at the bottom of the demijohn. The red is taking longer to settle but it has more volume.

The mushroom kits have stopped producing so I put one out by the alder trees above the 'Avenue' and the oyster mushrooms I put out by the beech tree in the opposite corner. Hopefully, there are enough spores left to populate edible mushrooms in our 'forest'. 

Beautiful Autumn colour this year. 

The leaves didn't get blown off or burnt.

Vineyard today.

Polytunnel goodies.

Roses still blooming

Mushrooms in the fallen leaves

Cosmos finally bloomed - in November

Poppy this morning

Hesperantha or Schizostylis - not sure which.

Sunrise Sunset Times of Newport, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Location: Ireland > Co. Mayo > Carrowbeg (Fergus) >

Timezone:

Europe/Dublin

Current Time:

2021-11-21 16:57:56

Longitude:

-9.5463685

Latitude:

53.8852758

Sunrise Today:

08:19:00 AM

Sunset Today:

04:29:50 PM

Daylength Today:

8h 10m 50s

Sunrise Tomorrow:

08:20:44 AM

Sunset Tomorrow:

04:28:38 PM

Daylength Tomorrow:

8h 7m 54s

The new gate to the apiary path

Back to work

The clocks changed this morning and we had forgotten to reset our alarm. So we were awake earlier than the rest of the world. The EU had voted to stop the clock changing nonsense, but deferred due to the pandemic. Bah-Humbug. 

The forecast was for heavy rain in the afternoon and evening so I got out to the vineyard right after breakfast. There was a 4 yo Chardonnay vine down with its support broken at the base. I didn't think we'd had much wind overnight. I called Alex and he immediately came up to pound in a fence post and secure the vine. It's fine, thank goodness. Then he went down to the shore to bail boats in between rain bursts. 

The land is so wet and there was evidence of new digging by the badger. I am tying up the new growth, removing the pink ribbons, and replacing tape with stretchy nylon ties. I got the Rondo-Chardonnay row done just as the rain started and the midges attacked. Boo-hoo. It was only about 11:00 am. Ghosty came to complain about the rain and to get me to return to the house. But I managed to secure the loose Solaris vines on the horizontal supports on the way down. 

At least I got the most important row done. The 2 yo Chardonnay vines had grown quite a bit and might have been whipping in the wind. Plus the pink ribbon was now very tightly bound to the vines. We lost three vines, two possibly because of the pink plastic ribbon and electrical tape. I'd like to replace those three, plus some of the others that didn't make it. 

It's raining very steadily now. It's going to be a very soggy Halloween, which we just learned originated in Tulsk, Co. Roscommon, Ireland.  So far it looks like a very mild and wet October, but I'll report the monthly figures tomorrow. 

Oh and all the wine containers have started bubbling again. Very good news.

Badger holes

Badgers like grubs

Chardonnay on the right,
Solaris on the left

A rather terrified self-isolating introverted pumpkin
this year.

“Rathcroghan, the Irish Otherworld & the Home of Halloween” 

Storm damage

Rainbow means rain

Last week's storms dumped a lot of rain and brought gale-force winds. Because the vines are still with leaves, they must have been whipping around because a number of the support posts broke at ground level. So Alex bought small fence posts which he pounded into the ground behind the old supports and secured the supports with attached vines to the posts. The ground is very wet but soft so it was easy to get the posts in. 

View of the vineyard from the East

I went up in the afternoon to tie up any loose vines using strips of nylon stocking. I also cut off the excess of the primary vine so it wouldn't whip around in the wind. They had grown quite a bit. I would have liked to have pruned more but this is not the right time to do that. Luckily the rain held off. 

I spotted a couple of issues that I will need to continue to take care of tomorrow. First, the pink ribbons that Alex tied onto the vines were constricting the vines as they grew fatter, like a girdle, creating indentations like waists. So I have to remove all of those urgently. Second, we had used electrical tape to secure the vines to the poles and that was, unfortunately, damaging the branches at the point of contact or killing them altogether. So I have to replace all of those. 

Autumn in the vineyard is lovely

On the positive side, the 4 yo Solaris vines had more small grape clusters than I thought and they are now very sweet. Interesting that the birds haven't found them. The two small clusters of Chardonnay grapes on one of the 4 yo vines are still hard and not ripe but I have hope. The roses we planted at the end of each row and along the fence are still blooming. Two pink, one climber dark pink, and yellow tinged with red at the entrance. 

Chardonnay grapes

The donkeys are in good shape and the vineyard cat is frolicking but complaining about being ignored. Plus there are signs of a badger digging. They like grubs so it's a natural form of pest control, as long as they don't take an interest in eating the vines. I hear and periodically see pheasants in the field and we have the occasional visit by a fox and a pine marten. Our rewilding and natural approach seems to be working. This time of year we get beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Today, I am feeling blessed. 

Fiery dawn

Morning pastels

Sunrise

Pink rose as an indicator of mildew

Ghost watching the donkeys

The donkeys watching me

Heavy cloud cover coming in