Sampler

The picture is just a wee sampler of some of the produce from our garden which is starting to produce a bit more. John has a habit of bringing things in and dumping them on the counter. By the time I find them the lettuce is limp and the ants have discovered the figs....as far as the figs are concerned, the tree is so loaded with them that there is enough to share with the birds, but they do tend to wait until the fruit  has reached a state of perfect ripeness to help themselves. We've been trying to stay one step ahead of the birds by picking the figs when they aren't quite ripe. They will ripen nicely in the house.

The tomatoes are suffering the same fate as the figs but they aren't nearly as prolific this year. John is still trying to figure out why they aren't 
thriving. He planted fava bean plants as a cover crop and dropped them and turned them under before planting the tomatoes. One of the veggie boxes has been breached by ground squirrels who found a weak spot in the mesh on the bottom of the box and rampaged around inside to cause a lot of damage.

Gardening is difficult enough that I wonder how the vineyard overseers manage. There are so many things that can go wrong including changes in the weather, frost, heat at the wrong time, ditto rain, bugs, gophers and ground squirrels  and birds to name a few. Veraison, when the green grapes begin  to change color happened about three weeks early this year, and the harvest, known as the 'crush' has begun. It is an extremely busy time involving balancing the developing the sugar content of the grapes with the weather. Every vineyard manager makes the decision to begin cutting the grapes based on the sugar or' Brix' count. This can vary quite a bit depending on varietal and location . We can always tell because we encounter the trucks transporting the crates of grapes to the winery.

Spike got a bath today. It is actually a shower. One of us gets in the shower, soaps him up and rinses off the soap while the other waits outside to receive him when he comes out...hopefully before he shakes gallons of water all over the bathroom. It's not a bad way to clean the bathroom floor...and sometimes the walls as well.

We're soon off to Jim and Dana's soon for Sunday supper...