More Rain On SA

It’s been a pretty good week on our little corner of this spinning top we call Earth.  First, it was a short work week because of the Labor Day holiday.  Then Wednesday evening we got an inch of rain.  It started before I left the office and rained off and on through the early evening, which means not only did it come slow enough to soak in,gayfeather in bloomit started early enough so that I didn’t have to go out and work after dinner.  Also, the Cowoboys went up to New York and spoiled the Giants little aren’t-we-the-greatest celebration on national TV.

With the rain a couple of weeks ago and then this week’s shower, you are probably wondering about the weeds.  Well, never fear, you can almost hear them growing.  I loaded up with Weed-B-Gone and assaulted them Saturday.  I also put down another another bag of pre-emergent.  I foresee spraying quite a bit over the next few weeks.  I’ve learned that fall spraying to kill the weeds before it gets to cold for WBG to be effective goes a long way to controlling the weeds the following spring. Continue reading “More Rain On SA”

Is there anything better than a three-day weekend, especially on the Friday afternoon before?  Well, there may be a few things, if you want to quibble, but a long weekend is hard to beat.  After our labors of last Saturday harvesting grapes and starting the primary fermentation, we followed that up this Saturday with racking the primary, which involves moving what is now wine to a carboy for the secondary fermentation. Continue reading

Grape Harvest

Today was harvest day at SA vineyards.  grapesJoyce and I got started right after breakfast and were ready to start the crush by 11:30.  Last year we used Abigail and Rebecca but we felt they were just too light to do a good job so this year Kari agreed to do it for us.  We dumped the grapes into a big wash tub in the man-cave and Kari got after it.  Continue reading “Grape Harvest”

Hurricane Damage
Hurricane Aftermath
A mini-hurricane blew through Amarillo yesterday evening and laid one of the biggest trees on the place neatly across our driveway. It was about the only place it could have fallen without damaging something else.
Sock Weeds

Joyce and I struck the first blow in the battle against sock weeds on SA today.  These are grassy weeds whose seeds stick in one’s socks causing discomfort and they’ve gotten entirely out of hand the last few years.  They sprout in winter and are hardly noticeable until the first balmy days of spring and then they are all over everywhere, impossible to deal with by hand and immune to broadleaf weed killer.  Continue reading “Sock Weeds”