Que Syrah, Syrah

Soooo many grapes....

When we moved into the house in 2013, the previous owners said the grape vines were Paso Robles Syrah.  They had Cut Them Back to just the main vine, that had taken 25 years to wind around the metal arched arbor they'd installed.  And when we moved in during October, the vines sprouted only a few little new shoots of growth.  Dr Desert Flower looked it up online, and she found where it said to cut back the new growth each year, so that the 2nd year's growth would produce fruit.  So we cut off the few little shoots in the winter of 2013, and then in the 2014 Spring, the vine surged in growth.

Dionysus (Διόνυσος) would be proud

In the Winter of 2014-2015, I cut back the vines about 1/2 way, and left the largest shoots still in place.  Wow... abundant production doesn't start to describe it.  Whereas we had about 10 bunches of grapes total in 2014, the 2015 out put will be over a 100 bunches, if not more.  They are hanging everywhere... and won't be ripe enough to pick or eat for at least another month or two at the earliest.

The birds & gnats got to the grapes in 2014, and of the 10 or so bunches, we enjoyed 1.5 bunches that were not pecked at by birds, swirling with gnat clouds, or being chomped on my lizards or insects.  Those 100+ 2015 bunches will make a real mess later this summer, if not promptly harvested by the new owners.

You can't see it, but there's a robin's nest, smack dab in the center of that arbor.  Two mourning doves tried to build a nest there, and I shooed them out, since they were going to poop all over my grill just 4 feet away.   Then, a pair of robins moved into the 1/2 built nest, finished it, and the female sits silently, paralyzed, "you can't see me" on it when I walk past to take out the garbage or do yard work. Persistent these birds are!