Spring!

Well, almost. Seemingly overnight, the almond trees are in bloom (at least 3 weeks late). The cherry and apricot trees are all suddenly starting to burst. It's such a pleasure to see the white and pink blossoms on the trees, a sure sign spring is coming. Last Thursday, my dad and I spent the day pruning. It was so warm, we wished we had short sleeves on. Then yesterday the dreaded mistral decided to change everything. 100 kilometer per hour winds, yuck! and we had to spend the whole day out there. Luckily, my sister, Molly, had come from England for the weekend, and our friends, Peter and Serge, came to help out too. So in the end the day had kind of a festive feeling. Helped by the fact that we were on the verge of finishing our biggest vineyard, the day turned out to be quite fun. Having lost my dad to a nasty cold, Molly to her flight back to the UK and Serge to various house projects that awaited him, Matt, Peter and I finished at about 5 o'clock. What a great feeling! Today we're headed back out to start on the Syrah. That's just about all we're doing here right now, pruning. The French have a saying: Taille tôt, taille tard, rien ne vaut la taille de mars. "Prune early, prune late, the best month to prune is the month of March. Good thing, since we still have half of our vineyards to finish! Almost everyone else has already finished, so I feel like we're behind, but as we are snip, snip snipping, the sap is beginning to drip from the ends where we cut. That is why March is the best month, as the sap rises and drips out, it helps the vines flush any bad things left over from the previous year. So we keep telling ourselves that we are right to be pruning so late in the season. Let's hope we're right!