EVERY day is a day of labor!

Our first monthly climatological summary!

(Click on chart to enlarge.)

What we wish all of our vines looked like!

It is Labor Day weekend and Kathy is on vacation for 12 days. She has been busy working in the vineyard, setting new bamboo poles for the vines and doing some tying and trimming. We have a variety of 1-, 2-, and 3-year-old vines and could have been doing a better job of training them. They should all look like the vine in the photo, but instead, they are various shapes and sizes, and we haven't been good at establishing the roots in the first year, trunks in the second and cordons in the third. So we have probably lost another year with some of the vines. We should have been doing some trimming to allow the vines to concentrate their growth on their trunks and, in some cases, cordons, but they have been allowed to grow unkempt and send out much too much new growth instead of thickening the older growth.

The good news is that the Japanese Beetles did a minimum of damage this year and we still have lots of leaves on the vines and aren't rushing around trying to fertilize. In fact, we are done fertilizing because we want the growth to stop now so that the vines can begin to prepare themselves for winter.

We had some powdery mildew and some other vine issues this growing season, but again, this has been minimal. Kathy sprayed for the mildew and it seems to be under control. She has been researching a new product to use next season.

Bonnie's garden looks like end-of-the-summer. She was not happy with her tomatoes this year. The cantaloupes were very good and she actually has a couple of small watermelons that will ripen. The charentais are plentiful and Kathy is hoping they will be good. We still have some green beans, and there will be lots of butternut squash.

Bonnie purchased some new tires for the Jetta and will soon be taking it into the shop for the repair work from her fender-bender.

June and Liz from down the road stopped by earlier this week and we had a nice visit. Liz is an anthropologist, so she and Bonnie had much to talk about since Bonnie is taking a cultural anthropology class.

Mike will be building us a pole building to house our cars and a shop for Bonnie to make her wines in. He will be out next week to stake it out. More details and photos as they become available.

We walked a check over to Jonathan last night and had a pleasant chat with LeeAnn and Rex who were minding the store in Jonathan's and Olivia's absence.

Kathy trimmed along the road for the second time last week and got poison something-or-other. Denny was over not long afterward to help get rid of some of the smaller stumps that we keep tripping over and that the trimmer-mower gets hung up on.

Bonnie purchased a compost bin from the Solid Waste District, so all of our waste except for meat and protein items is going out in it. We may have some compost in the spring.

Kathy has been fighting a cold for over a week now while Bonnie has been adjusting to her new diabetes medication, so things are not going at full speed here.

Don continues to do a great job mowing for us. All Kathy has to do is trim around the house, garden and vineyard...and she loves to run the trimmer mower. No kidding!