Old Vines

I love these venerable old head pruned vines. Instead of being trained to grow along a wire, the top of a branch is cut back to a bud, resulting in a free standing vine with a short trunk.  All the spurs, or permanent arms instead of being trained along a wire are allowed to grow around the head of the vine. , shaped like a goblet. or a small tree. It is a very old system of pruning so is seen mostly on older vines  as once they are pruned this way it is difficult to train it any other way. There are only a couple of places where I see head pruned vines and these zinfandel vines are on the way to Kathy's. They haven't been pruned yet, probably since their feet are still in water from the heavy rainfall earlier last month.

The fires in LA do bring back a lot of memories for me, but they tend to be little snapshots of places I used to go when I was growing up in Altadena. I can still picture the floor plans of both houses I lived in. I feel more sad than traumatized. It must be human nature to need a reason for why disasters like this happen. If we have a reason, I suppose we then have someone to blame. The mayor of LA is being blamed for not building more fire stations, but no amount of fire stations can deal with a firestorm. It's sort of a weird comparison but I liken it to trying to estimate how long it will get someplace. You don't factor in the fact that a bridge might fall down in an earthquake, you base your estimate on experience and common sense. 

The thing that has happened in every fire like this that I have witnessed is that it has been brought under control by the combined efforts of firefighters from everywhere. A Santa Rosa firefighter who is fighting the Eaton fire in Altadena said that he lost his own home in the Santa Rosa Tubbs fire and that this does bring the nightmare back to him, but 'it feels good to be able to help all the LA firefighters who responded when we needed them'. It is this kind of cooperation that controls wildfires, and it is only this kind of cooperation that will address climate change which is the true cause. 

Sadly, I see little sign of that happening. One town can go all electric while the one next to it is still burning coal. And the person who has to most ability to take charge doesn't believe in climate change and is blaming the governor of California for starting the fires by refusing to sign a water bill which doesn't exist.