They start before sun-up. Can you dig it? Changing the clocks made things darker in the morning. The lights on the digger look much more spooky in person than in this photo.
The weather is still a little wintry. Each morning, it seems, the ground is soaked with dew, ready to freeze at any moment. I'm sure the grape growers have their eyes peeled, looking out for frost warnings.
Here's another shot of the digger that's working out back now. Even from behind thing is huge. I wonder how long it'll be out there. It's far enough from our house that we hear no noise when it's operating.
Spring (Easter) vacations start next Saturday for certain regions of the country. In our area, they start on the eleventh. Another two weeks off for the youngsters.
It's almost as tall as I am. Granted, I'm not all that tall. But who's counting? Oh... I am.
Yesterday's market run was productive. At the produce store I found green asparagus, shiny eggplants, some spicy chorizo (not exactly produce, but that's ok), and a bunch of sweet radishes (called radis roses). The rain stopped, so I stopped at the outdoor market after all. And there was the asparagus and strawberry man. It's too early for strawberries (his,anyway), but he had bunches of white asparagus. Ken made risotto with green asparagus for lunch. Yum!
It's humongous! It's the digger they've been using out back this week to pull up spent vines and start preparing the parcel for new ones.
It started raining early this morning. The morning low is much higher than predicted, no where near freezing. My plans are to go to the market for a couple of things. I may just go to the produce store and skip the outdoor market. We want to make a risotto for lunch with either eggplant or asparagus. I'm not even sure if local asparagus is available yet. I can wait another week.
In other news, we turn the clocks ahead tonight. How annoying.
While we all wait for winter to leave and spring to arrive, work in the vineyards out back continues. In this case, another old parcel is being dug out. I figured that this parcel was doomed when the owners pulled out the guide wires and stakes last fall. Once the vine trunks are pulled up (with the help of this digger), they'll likely get piled up and burned. Then the land will probably lie fallow for a year or three before being replanted with new vines. You can see, to the right of the dirt road, part of the parcel that was replanted last year. The parcel being dug out is on the left.
Freezing temperatures were predicted for this morning, but our thermometer registers two degrees above. Of course, the temperature near the house is slightly warmer than the temperature out among the vines. But I don't see any smudge pots out there, so the growers are either taking a chance or they know something we don't.
This is the World Financial Center, seen from the World Trade Center observation deck in 1994. I'm not certain which buildings survived the September 11 attacks in 2001, but many of them did. Much has been built and re-built since then.
