Vintage 2015: Hot and Humid Weather

We have been having the dog days of summer this week. Hot and humid weather which began this Monday and will continue until the end of this week. Temperatures have been hitting the 90's. We have been going to the land in the early morning and my husband has been mowing the vineyard alleyways. There is not much one can do in this sweltering heat. Grapevines also suffer from excessive heat. Above 35^o C (95^o F), photosynthesis declines as stomata close in response to the excessive heat. That means that the CO₂ that goes into the production of sugars ceases.
My husband gave me a break from working in the vineyard. We both realized that my garden was in need of some serious watering so I have been working in my garden and had an opportunity to catch a pair of goldfinch. It seemed like the male goldfinch was acting as a "watcher" and allowing the female goldfinch to go into the garden to look for food.

Reference:
1. The Science of Grapevines Anatomy and Physiology, Markus Keller, 2010, Academic Press, pg. 20-47.
2. Daniel W Hopper, Ryan Ghan & Grant R Cramer, A rapid dehydration leaf assay reveals stomatal response differences in grapevine genotypes, Horticulture Research 1, Article number: 2 (2014)

Sake and Sushi

Two weeks ago today, I took a trip back home to Hawaii. Several events were converging and it was a good time to be there. First, I was summoned by my mother to be present for the 80th anniversary of the founding by my grandmother, of our little Buddhist temple that I grew up in, and it was my daughter's birthday and her son's (my grandson) birthday. So, it was a very good time to be there.
To celebrate my daughter's birthday, my daughter, her husband and I went to the best sushi restaurant (IMHO) on Oahu. It is a little hole in the wall located near a busy intersection and if you were not in the know, you would miss it completely. It is called Sasabune. We went there for lunch and sat at the counter. What do you drink with sushi but sake, it's like having ouzo with Greek food, it is the right pairing. The hostess suggested a very nice one so that is what I started with. She gave a generous pour and allowed me to take a photo of it.

The sake lasted for almost the entire meal, but I really do like to pair my sushi with sake so I asked the hostess to suggest another sake and this is what she recommended next.

All of us enjoyed the sushi, "da best kine" and I loved the sake. I also want to give a shout out to Paul whom I met on the flight from Providence to Chicago. The flight from Providence was delayed for hours and he had an iPhone 6 and looked up my flight information so that when the flight arrived in Ohare, I was able to run and made my flight to Hawaii. There were 65 people who did not make this flight so I felt really fortunate and now am convinced that I need an iPhone.

Shoot Positioning and Leaf Pulling

If you are as late as we are in putting up your trellis wire, you might find yourself doing the following: We are having to go through our vineyard and shoot position all of our vines that have reached their third level of catch wires.
For many of our vines, we have to untangle the tendrils that have entwined around each other, position the shoots where it makes the most sense and then leaf pull to expose our grapes to sunlight. We motored through the first 20 rows and we are now working on the Chenin Blanc that have as many as 50 plants per row it is taking us 2 or more hours per row. We need to do this so that we open up our canopy for airflow and allow the sunlight to hit our nodes so that the buds that will produce next year's growth will be fruitful. We have also been dropping fruit that is not on a cane that can support ripening as well as fruit that appears smaller than the majority of the rest of the fruit that we have. Here below is one of the standouts in our vineyard.

Stink Bugs in the Vineyard

Just one more shot of things on trellis wires a la If You String It They Will Come.
One day while we were taking a break from stringing our trellis wire, my husband saw this cute little parade. We tried to take a movie of it, but our camera was focused on something else and the parade came out blurry, but these photos will give you a sense of the entertainment these stink bug provided: