A good way to start the month!

Hallelujah, it rained last night and this morning! We've waited over two and a half weeks for this (I know, not exactly a drought but with all the perennials we put in, weekly watering by hand is a bit of a chore). We collected all the water we could in buckets (and coolers) off the patio roof, we probably wound up with over 30 gallons! Enough for one half of one watering, but still we were awfully excited. Pa, you'll appreciate that we got the hop trellis up:



And here's our slowest growing hop, Horizon



But the hop trellis wasn't the only training system I got up today, the grapes were also rewarded for coming back from a bad frost. All I had left to do was string the wires for my 4 arm kniffen trellis, and set the earth anchors. Here I am putting in the eye bolt that gets strung to the earth anchor



And a beautiful view of our vineyard



Besides some pruning, sumac-wacking, and mowing, the only other thing I accomplished on the hill today was putting in two raspberries (Prelude, supposedly they bear very early), and 3 grapes, all Cayuga. Sarah on the other hand managed to put in three more mounds of corn for a total of 11, plant two cherry tomatoes in pots, plant hills of beans around 3 of our plum trees, and help me with the sumac-wacking.

Our zucchini are all up now



along with most of our Scarlet Runner Beans



About a third of last week's corn planting is up too



In other news, we had a small grub problem in our rhubarb, but Sarah was happy to salvage the ungrubby part of the stalks



And we can't expect people to ever read our blog unless we include cute pictures of our animals, so here is Gerard, quite content to be out of the rain, but still out of the house



But even a cat can be unphotogenic!



And Roscoe truly enjoys our slow drives to and from the hill; it's fast enough to smell at super speed, but slow enough to be able to breath (and avoid choking on one's jowls). He takes his job of sniffing the neighborhood very seriously






But even at 30 mph, he still has to take breaks



Oh, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but we killed our keg of Red Lager. What color that beer had!



Cheers!

This Week's Adventure

I (Sarah) was driving home from work yesterday afternoon. As I neared Elm Street (where we turn off the main road towards home), I saw a red Saturn with a white rag in the window parked on the opposite side of the road. Hmmm, that looks like it could be Mick's car. Yes, I see the Gadsden flag, that's his car alright. Uh-oh. Apparently, on Mick's way to school that morning, the car carried him safely through the intersection, then stalled and refused to restart. It was a pathetic sight, the tired old car parked along Route 41 waving the white flag of surrender. Mick's dad very kindly drove down to help him troubleshoot and see if any life could be breathed into the poor vehicle or if it was indeed belly-up.
I was very impressed watching them push the car back along Route 41 past Elm Street, so they could tow it straight home rather than continuing along 41 and trying to turn around. (Actually, they did a better job pushing the car than I did driving mine in reverse.) While they tinkered in the driveway, I cleaned leeks that we had dug on Monday.
Roscoe insisted on being in the driveway with the menfolk rather than in the house with me. Finally, with some long-distance help from John (thank you!), the car came back to life! So we are still a two-car family, at least for now. :) We took it out for a test drive, and it successfully carried us up the hill. Roscoe's favorite part was looking/smelling out the window.
We inspected the garden
and Marty spotted our first hop sprout.
The rhubarb is going crazy!
This is a pile of trees that Mick has thinned. The trees were planted so closely together that they grew tall but incredibly thin, and if you look at the grove, you wouldn't believe he took anything out, they are still so close.
Then we dug leeks for Marty to bring home.
We have SO MANY LEEKS. It is hard to believe that they are a protected species in Quebec (where the French poetically call them garlic of the forest). Several patches of May apples have appeared among the leeks...
the trout lilies are blooming...
and most exciting, we have scarlet trillium!
Trillium is such a beautiful flower, and the red are Mick's favorite, but we only saw one or two in our wanderings last year. Mick collected May apple seeds last fall hoping we could plant some on our property, and he has been telling me about leeks and looking for them without any luck since last year. We are so pleased to have these beautiful and productive plants already on our land.
Having dug our leeks, we enjoyed sunset beers. (You can see the asparagus trench, the rhubarb, the row of raspberries, and grape trellis posts.)
A lovely ending to a quite unexpected day!