Escargot?

Resting in Vinomaker's palm (he makes a great hand-model, doesn't he?), are dozens of garden snail eggs.  These eggs were a 'gift with purchase' courtesy of a bag of Miracle-Gro Potting Mix. Sigh.  As a result, Vinoland has now been inadvertently inoculated with hundreds of these little snaily-gems. Some large, some small, some so ripe that they popped when I touched them (I hate when that happens).  Now, I'm no conchologist, so they could actually be slugs eggs.  But regardless of which particular gastropod these eggs belong to they are most definitely French. How do I know this?  Because one just winked at me.  Sacrebleu!

Slowing down.

I'm not slowing down, nor apparently is this common garden snail (Cornu aspersum) who, along with his pals, keeps popping up in the Syrah vines (not in the garden).  It is the grapevines themselves that are slowing down. The grand period of growth - a period of time when the shoots of vigorous grape varieties can elongate as much as an inch or more a day - is almost at an end.  During bloom the rapid shoot growth slows; in part due to competition for the allocation of photosynthates; in part because of hormone and enzyme activity in the flowering vine.  But also because May has been an unseasonably cool month.  The California May Grey has also retarded development a little bit, as the weather has been rather chilly and thus the vines have not been quite as enthused.

Me?  I haven't been able to slow down yet.  As quickly as the vines have been putting on vegetal growth, I've been busy tidying the over-zealous shoots by tucking them behind the trellis wires. The snail?  Well, his departure into the blackberry thicket, facilitated by me, was anything but slow.