Little Brother

Bouncing baby boy, just delivered today.

At the NCAAs in Spokane With Me Boys

Rough Pruning

Taking advantage of some beautiful, shirt-sleeve weather to start rough-pruning the vines, cutting back any dead wood and lopping suckers and any canes I know I won't use. I leave 5 to 6 buds on the remaining canes for now. Just before the buds pop in mid-April I'll go through and do a final prune down to 2 buds each. Double-pruning like this can delay bud-break by a week or so and possibly get you past a late frost that might do bud damage. (It actually worked perfectly last spring!)

Sometimes a finch will fly in, sit on a post a few feet away and trill at me: "Whatcha doing?" And I tell them.

Red-tailed hawks wheeling overhead piercing the quiet with sharp cries.

It's the best job in the vineyard.