Periodic puppy pics

Here's Callie looking back at me on a recent walk. She always wonders if I'm capable of keeping up. I am. But when I've got the camera, I stop too much for her taste. She waits for me, but I know she's just doing it to be polite. She must wonder if I could find my way home without her.

Spring is chilly this year. But the plants are coming along, and there are lots of flowers. A good sign? I hope so.

The grape vines are starting to get their leaves now. Spring is unfolding in slow motion this year. That's ok, as long as it means that we'll have a nice summer. I don't know why it should mean that, but I'm hoping it does.

Swiss chard

Blettes in French or silverbeet in the Queen's Aussie English. This is one of six or seven plants that remain of our fall crop; they overwintered in the jardin potager (kitchen garden). They're coming back and should provide us with a couple of decent spring harvests. The leaves are tender and sweet when cooked and the stems are delicious, too. It's best to cook them separately as the stems take a little longer to cook than the leaves.

Chard in the spring garden.

I've planted a row of sweet peas next to these already. One day soon I'm going to put in a row of curly kale as well. But today, while chilly, is clear and dry and I've got to take advantage of that and get the grass cut again.

It's apple blossom time

Our apple trees are in flower now. Last year they didn't flower at all, and we had very few apples (almost none). This year looks like it'll be back to thousands of apples. That will need to be picked up off the ground every time I cut the grass.

Blossoms on one of our four apple trees.

Some will make it into pies, others into apple jelly. Most will go into the compost pile.

Beetle bugs and coincidences

I've seen a few of these beetles on my daily walks recently. They're hard to miss, being so large and so iridescent. They move quickly, too. It was hard to get a clear shot as he sped along.

The shot's a bit blurry as the bug was speeding along quite nimbly over the leaves. I think this might be a female European oil beetle.

Many of you expressed concern about my wine enjoyment in the comments section of the last post. Fear not! I have not yet decided to give up wine altogether. I mean, wine is one of the basic food groups, right? And I live in a vineyard. My triglyceride levels were not that high, after all.

But a curious thing happened. When I stopped the wine for two weeks, my sinuses cleared up. I hadn't breathed so freely in over a decade. Then, the day after I started having wine again, my sinuses blocked up and I am now having nasal allergy-like symptoms: runny nose, itching, and sneezing.

It could all be a coincidence related to spring pollens in the air as these weather systems bring up nasty stuff from the south. Ken has really been suffering from that lately. Or, in some odd twist of fate, the universe could be telling me that I'm allergic to wine.

Good numbers

My doctor wanted me to get my blood analyzed for triglyceride levels because my last annual test showed them to be a little higher than the safe/low risk level. He said that wine was the cause of the high numbers, so I decided not to drink wine for the two weeks before my follow-up analysis to test his theory.

Dandelion seeds.

He was right. My triglyceride levels plummeted by half and are now well within the normal range. But that's not the best part. While I was at the lab, I noticed a poster on the wall advertising that patients can now get their lab results on line. So I inquired. Sure enough, I got an ID number and a password, and that evening I was able consult and download my results via the internet. That saves me a trip back to the lab to pick them up.

A nice couple of days

Wednesday was beautiful, and today is supposed to be even nicer with a high temperature of 24ºC (about 75ºF). We'll take it. But then Friday and the weekend are predicted to bring rain and une baisse vertigineuse des temperatures (a vertiginous drop in temperature), i.e., it's gonna get cold again.

Our laurel hedge is flowering now.

We are taking advantage of the nice weather to work outdoors. I got some seeds planted in the garden; they're for early crops like radishes and lettuces and peas, so the cooler temperatures shouldn't hurt them. And we burned our yard waste. We had three piles under tarps all winter and now they're gone. It sure feels good to get something accomplished!

Borderline

I've mentioned before that the vineyard out behind our house is a patchwork of sorts. The vines are not all owned by one grower. Rather, the seemingly seamless vineyard is a collection of individual parcels owned and tended by many local growers.

Green vs. brown.

Some of the growers practice organic or near-organic growing. They mow or plow between the rows of vines to keep weeds down. Others use herbicides to kill the grasses and weeds that grow under the vines. You can see the difference in the photo above; the use of herbicide is obvious in the parcel on the right.

I prefer the parcels that keep their weeds. The grass and wildflowers, in addition to being pretty, provide habitat for the insects and other small critters that live out there. They don't seem to have any detrimental effect on the grapes.