By Slim Randles
We have a master gardener in our family. Two, actually. My wife, Catherine, and her identical twin, Eleanor. These women spent a whole year studying stuff like how to grow things that you’d like to have and how to avoid growing things that turn your stomach.
Catherine is really active in the group and volunteers to find volunteers. Hey, you can ask. She loves doing it, and I’m kinda an occasional tag-a-long.
We went to a pruning clinic just the other day to learn how to prune grapevines. We listened, took pictures and snipped things off that looked to me like they belonged where we found them.
Shows what I know.
At home we prepared to give our own grapevine a thorough inspection to see about things like new growth, arms, bumps on the arms, all that stuff that knowledgeable gardeners who attend pruning clinics learn.
It’s a wild grapevine that began life in a canyon up in the fairly nearby desert mountains. I, being a know-nothing gardener, wrenched it from its ground and planted it in the side yard here at the house. That was about 20 years ago. Since that time, it has flourished, having reached out to our neighbors to the south, and consumed everything in its path that held still long enough.
So out we went to our tiny little part of the viticultural world, just outside the office window a little way, and the vine exploded in our faces as a mama white-winged dove blasted out of there to a neighbor’s tree. After undergoing self CPR, we looked and there was a tiny nest of twigs in the top of the grapevine. With two little eggs sitting quietly, waiting for Mom to come home.
I don’t care how much our “vineyard” needs it, there will be no pruning on it without the full blessing of The Family Dove. Maybe next year.
Brought to you by “Max Evans, the First Thousand Years,” by Slim Randles. Available in bookstores and online from UNM Press.