Skip this post. No politics. It's another Vineyard update.

"Baby, the rain must fall
Baby, the wind must blow. . . ."
          Title song to the movie, "Baby, the Rain Must Fall"; hit song by Glenn Yarbrough, 1965

Wednesday evening in Medford all hell broke loose: lightning, thunder, hard rain and hail.

It was the hail that worried me.

The storm was a false alarm for the vineyard. The grapes are all right.

The hail made a roar as it hit my patio deck. Listen:

Click: 21 seconds

The thunderstorm moved slowly over the Rogue Valley. It went from my house in Medford toward and over the vineyard 13 miles away getting there about 15 minutes later. 

I have a lot of time and money in the grapes at this point. Stuff happens. A year ago a beautiful Malbec crop, so heavy we had to drop fruit to thin the plants, got wiped out by starlings in two days, just before harvest. The Pinot Noirs are about two weeks away from being ready to pick. The Malbecs would be next. Then the Cabernet Sauvignons. 

I was concerned that the hard hail, being blown sideways, would blast open the grape skins and ruin the crop. We purposely exposed the grapes on the east side of the plants by pulling the leaves on the side that would get the morning sun. The canopy of grape leaves might protect the grapes from hail coming straight down, but the hail in Medford wasn't coming straight down. It was blowing sideways from east to west, at a 45-degree angle. Grapes are grown to hang down from the cane wire where the are exposed to the air and sun. And hail, if the vineyard got it.

It turns out that for whatever meteorological reason the storm had exhausted itself by the time it got to the vineyard. There was rain but no hail, and the grapes looked safe and happy when I checked them. This is what the Cabernets look like, protected behind the black mesh bird netting. I estimate that they are about four or five weeks away from harvest, based on the fact that the Pinots are about two weeks out.

All three varieties of grapes looked fat and happy.

Readers who garden will understand the parental feeling of care and nurture we have for plants we have tended. We spend a season protecting them and giving them what they need, so we are emotionally invested. It triggers the feeling we have about young children in our care. We babied these plants. The kids are all right. Everything is OK. Whew.

My neighbor climbed up the ladder on the side of one of my frost protection towers to take this photo at dusk. Bedtime.

Good night, vineyard. Good night grape plants. Good night the grapes hanging down from the cane. Good night the bird netting and the trellis wires and the drip lines. . . .

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