With today's post, I am beginning a new series called the "Lives of the Vines." The idea is to document the growing cycle of our vineyard from bud break to dormancy. Once a week, I plan to photograph the same grapevine to illustrate what's happening in the vineyard. Also, I will give a short summary of the progress being made. To bring you up to speed, the following things have already happened in the vineyard:
Bud break began around April 15. Now that the tender leaves are sprouting, we hope there will be no more frosty nights. Last year we lost half our crop to frost.
In the vineyard, where the combination of rainfall and 80-degree-plus heat is guaranteed to produce growth that one might swear is actually visible to the casual observer, grape flower clusters are poised to enter the critical period of bloom, during which the size of this year’s crop will be determined. Many of our neighbors have told us that both the size and the number of their clusters seem to be on the high side of normal which is the case in our vineyard as well. Let's hope so after last year's damage from frost. This a photo of what the vineyards looked like on Howell Mountain du
ring the frost last year. Thanks to Jon, our neighbor, for the photo. This week workers will be suckering the vines to remove the vegetative canes with no buds on them to promote growth of the canes with buds. 
