Happy Good Friday.

And it was a good Friday.  I spent most of my day down in the East Bay running errands and having my hair done.  (One just has to look good when working in the vineyard).  I did a little bit of pruning when I got back up to Napa, walked Vinodog 2 and then observed my Good Friday paschal fast with a nice shrimp/pasta dish - washed down with a Silverado Vineyards, 2014 Sauvignon Blanc (Yountville AVA).  Hardly fasting, I know.
I have to be finished with pruning the Cabernet sauvignon grapevines this Sunday, that includes tying all the canes down.  I think I can do it, but I may need Vinomaker's help with the tying. Meanwhile, the Pinot grigio vines are going crazy: baby flower clusters are visible and the trunks are popping out all over with adventitious buds and shoots (which means lots of extra suckering work).  Happy spring!

Mr. Beakly.

I am sad.  This spring all the usual feathered-suspects have returned to Vinoland (some never left); Mr and Mrs Brown-headed cowbird, a mélange of assorted sparrows, a veritable throng of titmice, the ever quarrelsome scrub jays...chestnut-backed chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, mourning doves, quail, bluebirds, finches and towhees - to name but a few.  All these tweeting, hopping and fluttering visitors stop by our deck, several times a day, to grab a snack from the seed-smorgasbord that Vinomaker puts out for them.  Ever present are the dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis), a small bird widely distributed in the United States usually having a pinkish bill, dark ashy-grey head and conspicuous white lateral tail feathers that they flash in flight.  But three particular juncos of note have routinely come and gone for the past few years.  Until this year.
First, there is 'Necklace' - a junco with a very exaggerated ring of light-coloured feathers, akin to a mayoral chain of office, on his chest.  Then there is 'Spectacles' - a dapper little fellow with a pronounced ring of lightly pigmented feathers around each eye, just like he is wearing a pair of reading glasses.  And last, but not least, my favourite, 'Mr. Beakly' - a curious little birdie with muddled pigmentation on his chest and a Mallen Streak on his head.  But most notable of Mr. Beakly's somatic-anomalies is his malformed beak (a junco's beak should be almost finch-like).  And it seems like his beak is continually growing because when last I saw him his lower mandible seemed even larger than usual.  My little mutant isn't at all shy and lets me get quite close to him as he scoffs up seeds with a peculiar sideways action.  I just think he's great.   Alas, I have eagerly awaited his reappearance for the past few weeks now, but to no avail. 
Who knows how old Mr. Beakly was when I first noticed him: unfortunately, nature may have just simply run it's course and Mr. B is now swapping seed-plundering stories and perfectly pigmented wing feathers with avian-angels.  I just miss my little twitterer.

Frost season.

Having a cover crop in a vineyard is generally a good thing for the vineyard's health.  However, a tall cover crop (like the 5' tall mustard in the above photograph) can artificially raise the vineyard floor, thus encouraging frost to settle on the new plane which is what the top of the cover crop has now effectively become. Unfortunately, that can be right in the bud/fruit zone. Napa had a fairly hard frost event yesterday. Currently, it's 31 degrees F as I type and the roof of Vinoland's barn is white with frost - it faces west.

The folks at Far Niente mowed down their cover crop yesterday. Just when the bell beans, field peas and vetch had started to bloom and look very pretty, the rain ended, took the clouds with it and opened the door to usher in frost season.  A disked, vegetation free, dark-soil vineyard floor is the best condition in which to capture the sun's daytime warmth.  In my opinion, a cover crop is essential to soil health, but for frost protection the timing of mowing down a vineyard's cover crop is crucial to saving the grape crop.  And, that's the conundrum of cover cropping.
By the way, Happy California Poppy Day!

Bean dip.

This past week, in his spare time, Vinomaker has been busy mowing and weed-whacking/strimming the tall, lush vegetation that has sprung up all over the vineyard. Alternate periods of rain and sunshine have resulted in a verdant extravaganza of weeds this spring. Besides looking rather unkempt, high vegetation in the vine rows can contribute to frost damage of the developing vintage. By effectively raising the floor of the vineyard, tall plants positively invite frost to settle right at the level of the succulent, new shoots on the grapevines. The uninterrupted flow of dense, cold air past the vines is extremely important.
In the long grass at the edge of the creek, I found a couple of runaway bell beans (Vicia faba) enjoying their reprieve, after a quick swim, from certain disking death over in the Far Niente vineyard a mere 100 yards away: a fate their siblings succumbed to just a few days ago. They will be safe here in the sanctuary I call Vinoland.