Thwap!

I have spent a lot of time in the vineyard since I returned to California: I am paying for going on holiday during the spring bud break-bacchanalia.
The weather in Vinoland continues to be unusually cool which has been a bit of a boon as whilst I was away the vines have had a bit of a slower start to the growing season.  There is no evidence, as yet, of flowering in the Orange muscat (OM), or the Pinot grigio.  Flowering was retarded in 2018, so I'm expecting 2019 to be late also.  However, it's not as if the grapevines were dormant in my absence, there is plenty of growth for me to deal with.
The OM is more than a little unruly, I was positively slapped silly as I struggled to stuff the recalcitrant shoots into the trellis wires. I'm not a wimpy person, but at one point I almost felt that if I got thwapped in the face one more time I was going to burst into tears.  It hurt!
Whilst I'm not saying a grapevine has the ability to bear malice (even with my proclivity to be a tad anthropomorphic), I do feel I was being severely reprimanded for my dereliction of viticultural-duty.  Ouch.