Bloom

Newly emerged Marquette leaves, weighted by dew at sunrise.

These abundant June mornings, we arrive at sunrise to a vineyard dripping with dew, and noisy with new life.

The vineyard is in bloom. 

On our historic farm property, this moment in the life of the vines coincides with a time when our diverse 55 acres of woodland, pasture, vineyard, orchard, and still &  flowing water greets us each day with new blossoms, freshly unfurled foliage, and, everywhere, creatures newly born and hatched.

I've never read a poetic ode to the glory of a vineyard in bloom.

The grape flowers themselves are green or a dull sulfurous yellow: exquisite in their own minuscule  perfection, but hardly showy enough to inspire a wandering bard to commit the sight to verse.

Inconspicuous Marquette bloom.

But let me attempt to paint a word picture of what a day in our vineyard looks like, in this short hopeful season when the grape vines bloom:

Our vineyard office sits atop a small swell of land, providing an opportune vantage to start our day. (I imagine the pioneer farmer who chose this site for his house had this exact morning vista in mind.)

We see the South Vineyard unfurling on a distant sunny slope.

In the foreground, steam rises from the spring-fed mill pond.

Our resident Great Blue Heron stands in majestic stillness on the barn stone shore line. Upon our approach, she silently swoops off with effortless grace.

A box turtle has slowly and methodically made her way from the distant lake to a bare patch of earth, where she deposits her eggs.

She blinks at us with startlingly pretty red-framed eyes.

Walking past the historic barn of virgin Ohio oak, we come upon the North Vineyard, and as we do so, Betty the brown duck toddles out from her nest under the hydrangeas, where she tends a clutch of eight eggs.

Arriving in the Marquette block of the vineyard, the sections we've worked through this week display neat walls of bright green foliage, contained between strands of galvanized wire.

Each of those thousands of rampant shoots was hand trained vertically to create this transitory scene of perfect order.

In a few more days, those newly trained rows, fed by abundant rain, lengthening days, and fertile loam, will produce another round of prodigious new growth, and we will start over once again from where we so recently began: restoring our version of Eden on what would prefer to be wilderness.

We walk down the rows, tucking some errant shoots that were either missed yesterday, or that grew overnight and flopped to the ground under the weight of a heavy morning dew.

Grape leaves that weeks ago were perhaps the size of a silver dollar are now bigger than my outstretched hand.

We scout for pests, mildew, mold, blight.

We check the rain gauge and the vineyard weather station.

Now, we enter the last rows of Marquette vines, the ones we have yet to tend in this round of training.

We are no longer in Eden, but somewhere far more primal. 

Thick blood-red shoots sprout from the base of the vines, and from all along the woody gnarled trunks. They seem to reach and grasp, bright red tendrils straining (menacingly?) for something to latch onto.

New green leaves unfurl above the trellis, dripping with dew, illuminated by the rising sun. 

We don't pause for too long, not for fear of the tendrils, but because this sunrise survey is just a short part of the work of our day.

Before moving along, however, we notice how incredibly LOUD the life in the vines can be in this season of bloom.

Killdeer hatched a few weeks ago when the grape buds first burst now scurry beneath the vineyard rows, trilling, singing, fanning their tails. 

On the lake shore, water fowl noisily squawk ancient rivalries, defending terrain, protecting their broods.

On the row ends, our newly-mounted bluebird houses are fully occupied.

A shiny indigo-breasted swallow emerges from one, splitting her attention between two ardent rivals.

Full Occupancy

Even the locust vineyard poles that support the galvanized wire and rampant vines sing: from knot hole nests within, the cheeping and chirping of newly hatched swallows.

Singing locust poles.

And so the work of the day commences.

This day when the vines blossom with insignificant flower, we hope to complete this section of Marquette, and make progress through the more orderly Frontenac Gris just beyond.

At the end of the day, we will pause at the end of our newly ordered rows, as errant red shoots we removed from craggy trunks shrivel on lush vineyard turf under a pleasant June sun.

We will pause for a moment, relishing the symmetry and order we have just imposed.

We will feel pride in the work accomplished in this bountiful June day.

And we will feel humbled, knowing that by Monday, it will be time to start over and do it all again.

Caught up in the new life unfolding so abundantly around us, we keep the perspective that it won't always be this way.

This season of bloom is the lush peak of the vineyard's yearly cycle.

Soon, the Solstice.

The days will imperceptibly shorten.

New growth will ebb ever so slightly.

Grape vines will put their energy into converting those insignificant dull blossoms into vibrant, sweet fruit.

Until then, we just try to keep up with the rampant vines, and enjoy the view along the way.

Fleeting perfection of order imposed.