Adventures In Vine Land

Walking Callie in the vineyard is always an adventure. More or less. This morning is the first clear morning we've had in a few days. That means the waning moon is quite visible in the western sky as it sets.

One of the last of the summer bees rests on a grape leaf.

When Callie sees the moon, she starts to bark and tries to chase it. She was a good half-mile out in front of me today. I could hear the barking in the distance. Since there were no harvesters out there this morning, I wasn't too worried. I whistled once and she came bounding back, only to turn to chase the moon away again.

The chestnuts are falling from the trees now.

The morning flights south were in full swing, as evidenced by the jets and their condensation trails. The contrails were short today, and I counted nine jets across the sky at one time, all but one making their way south. To Lyon ? To Marseille ? Rome, Algiers, Khartoum or Kinshasha ? Who knows. It's funny to think that, way up there in one of those jets, a flight attendant is pushing a cart up the aisle...

This tiny mushroom is about an inch tall.

Then Callie spotted a pheasant. These birds prefer to maneuver on the ground, taking flight only when necessary, it seems to me. After running this way and that for a bit trying to escape the dog's less than honed herding instincts, the male bird took off into the trees squawking as pheasants do. It wasn't long before Callie found another one. Same scenario.

The grape tendrils have stopped growing and are drying up.

We made it home safely. The house looked very nice in the morning light, with wisps of smoke rising up from the chimney. We turned the furnace on this morning to take the chill off, just enough to heat the radiators up, then turned it off again. We hope the sun will take care of the rest until this evening, when a fire in the wood stove might be necessary.

Pine trees on the edge of the vineyard.

They say that we're in for a warming trend, so we may not need a fire after all. We'll see.

Callie waits for me to let her into the yard through the back gate after a recent walk. You can tell I've started trimming the hedges.

And today is market day. I'm going off in search of boudin antillais, a spicy blood sausage that we'll eat with french fries. Ken's still recovering from his cold, so he's in for the day.