Jumpers

Since my last post...

First: Happy KIWI Birthday Hillary!

Laundry was done and is in need of doing again. The washer washes and rinses and spins as I thought. The lowest energy setting is with cold water and the whole process takes almost 2 hours. Then you have to dry the clothes on the line. Marj's method seems to be the best. She hangs the shirts on hangers over the wires on posts in the vineyard where the sun can really hit them. Other stuff goes right over the vineyard wires and they stay for as long as it takes. If it is sunny it really doesn't take long at all!

There were several cold and cloudy days early this week. On those days Brian and I huddled in the container and watched a few movies or we ventured into town for some groceries, other shopping, and restaurant and library visiting. We found a few restaurants with great lunch prices. We have definitely become fans of the library where we read magazines--Brian reads scientific things usually, while I read Vogue and Vanity Fair and sometimes if I am feeling brainy I read TIME, all of which are at least a year old. This keeps us off the cold streets of Blenheim or in the blustery everywhere of the vineyard.

My last 2 visits to town have been very fruitful. I got a great hat at the Warehouse and pre-ordered my copy of HP7 2 trips ago and on our latest journey we hit 2 of the at least 4 thrift stores and came home 2 bags of wool warmer. Brian got a great wool jacket for multipurpose use. I got a great yellow jumper (kiwi vocab word of the day! means: sweater) and 2 wool (merino in fact) turtlenecky undershirts. I browsed the shoe store's selection of Ugg boots (wool lined sheepskin boots or the cheaper synthetic version I will likely purchase soon) but was not convinced to buy.

Murray stopped by Sunday evening and we told jokes and drank wine and ate food until late... well 10, which is now officially late.

On Wednesday Brian and I stripped the vineyard for half a day. On Thursday we learned how to trim and worked all day! We are feeling a little more tired and sore at night now but definitely welcome the work. I really liked learning about how Marj and Tadeu prune, it helps me understand the process of grape growing a little better. Starting at pruning is a good way to see the growth through the season from start to finish.

Friday (today) we redid all the trimming we had done on Thursday so that there were not too many buds on the weaker vines. The strongest of the strong vines are only allowed 20 buds. So we had to learn how to look at the trunk of the vine and tell how strong it was and decide how many buds it should have. Then we had to trim off buds so they are spaced enough to allow each bud to have room to grow successfully. We worked until about 2 this afternoon so that we could enjoy some of the sun's warmth.

The past few sunny days have been great. We were working in the vines and shedding 2-3 layers! The cloudless sunny sky is always welcome when we stomp around in frost until about 9 each morning.

Brian just posted his week in pictures dedicated to an in-depth look at this stripping and trimming process. You should check it out.

Wish us warm sunny weather!

Cheers!