Rain at last

After five weeks without rain, on June 17th, it started raining. Not a lot, but steadily on and off all day, we had gentle showers. It's been raining daily since then, but very atypically. We've had 30 mm of rain since then. 

We've had thunderstorms every afternoon like we used to have midsummer in New Jersey. Hot, humid, thunderstorms with many lightning strikes north and south of us. We've never had lightning before, only thunder. Yesterday, much of the country was without power, but we managed to avoid the worst. Tralee experienced flash flooding as did other areas. 

Meanwhile, you can feel the plants breathing a sigh of relief and drinking up the refreshments as they are offered. The roses are in spectacular bloom. 

The vines are growing like wild, and yesterday, the Rondo bloomed. Solaris has not yet flowered, its buds still closed tight. There are millions of pollinators at work in the vineyard. I couldn't stand being there for long yesterday, swatting flies nonstop. 

Today, MET ÉIREANN has announced a Status Orange thunderstorm warning for the entire country.

Rondo

Solaris

The heatwave continues

Met Eireann has issued a yellow warning for thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, but there's no sign of any precipitation. A few cumulonimbus are building but nothing really ominous, yet.  We've had 4.1 mm of rain in the first two weeks of June in Furnace at least, and there is not much on the horizon. The next two days are to be the hottest of the week. We reached 26C today in the shade. That's 79F. It doesn't sound like a lot but it is for us, and our vegetation wasn't made for this climate. 

Met Eireann has also announced that the rest of the summer is going to be hotter and drier than normal. We've already lost quite a few plants with watering every day. If we can't water at some point, we will lose much more. We were supposed to have thunderstorms yesterday, and some places did, but what we got again was not nearly enough to make a difference. 

Somehow the vines are growing strongly. They have not yet flowered but are now close. Let's hope the fruit sets and we manage to have a decent harvest. 

Roses in vineyards

We have been planting roses at the end of each row of vines. There were traditionally two reasons for doing this.

First, roses are susceptible to the same fungal diseases as vines but they tend to get symptoms of infection earlier. So it's an indicator of when to treat.

Second, it was rumoured that horses working the vineyards would know when to turn when they smelled the roses. I find this explanation dubious, but Alex likes it.

Anyway, they are coming on nicely and I love them, whatever the reason.. 

Glass cork

Last week, I went to open a bottle of rose wine and discovered it had a glass 'cork'. I'd never seen such a thing, so I kept it to investigate further. It looked rather elegant but was so tight fitting that it was hard to open. 

Then I did a little research which led me to an article in the WaPo. I learned that glass 'corks' or stoppers are quite popular in Europe but have not been accepted in America. 

The company that makes them is Called Vinolok. They market them for pink wines. They come in a variety of shapes and colours, and the premium collection looks like decanter stoppers. They use the name Vinoseal in Europe but the URL defaults to Vinolok. Their catalog has many versions including a bespoke version that can be custom designed to any shape. 

They even make bottles for premium spirits and wines. Very nice. 

The Vinolok closure has such a tight seal that there is no loss, no air intrusion and no need for sulfites. It doesn't impart any flavours as synthetic corks can. It's not as easy to open as a screw cap, but it does impart a premium impression. It is easy to bottle manually, taking just 1 hour to bottle and seal 1000 bottles. 

I'll research bottles and other packaging for another article. But the cry has gone out to manufacturers of glass bottles to make lighter weight bottles to reduce the carbon footprint and the cost of heavy glass bottles and their shipping. 

Rain welcome!

 

It rained gently on and off most of the day yesterday over our gardens. The earth has breathed a sigh of relief, but I'm afraid it was not enough to make a huge difference. Certainly didn't refill our pond or water butts. 

Curiously, Newport Furnace reported only 0.1 mm of rain for June through yesterday so the conditions were very localized. Belmullet and Clairmorris reported more like 17 mm of rain, which I think was far more than what we saw. People in the gardening group were reporting heavy downpours in Limerick and hardly anything in Donegal and Dublin. 

But everything is growing rapidly, yet the grapes have not yet bloomed. I walked through lifting a few vines that had fallen off the supports. It's very difficult for me as they are too high for me to be able to work on them comfortably at my height. 

It's now warm and humid with gentle offshore breeze and set to continue this way for at least a week. It will be back to watering. Our friends Philip and Lynda who arrived by boat yesterday from England, departed today heading North. They hadn't been here in 5 years and there was much to see. They were suitably impressed. 

A kiwi in the vineyard

Rain just started falling

It's been weeks since we had any rain. For 8 days in June, not a drop. Not a drop for a couple of weeks before that and things have started dying even with daily watering. But somehow the vineyard has survived. We are to get several mm over the course of today as a result of the fringes of Storm Oscar. But the temperature is also to climb so it may just all evaporate. I don't recall the air ever being so dry here before. 

The kite is flying over the berries and we've had great strawberries so far but the gooseberries are tiny and the leaves have shriveled and dropped. Blueberries are on their way. Raspberries are just beginning to ripen. The vines have still not flowered but I have a feeling they will this week. 

The vine in the polytunnel is doing well with lots of clusters of grapes about pea-sized so far. 

Met Eireann and other leading forecasters have warned that temperatures will only get hotter over the coming days with next week particularly warm.

Temperatures as high as 28C degrees as a humid airmass moves across the country with a high risk of thunderstorms.

It's official, El Niño has arrived.

 

ENSO Update: NOAA blog

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center (CPC) has announced  El Niño conditions are present and are expected to gradually strengthen into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2023-24.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-cpc-says-el-nino-conditions-present-2023-06-08/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1666940759759630338