Rain and overdue yardwork

After I arrived at my house yesterday I crawled into bed, continued my re-reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that I had begun earlier that evening, tried to call a friend, read a bit more of the book, and tried to call again and succeeded. We talked for a longish while, at the end of which I fell asleep.

I woke up early - I tend not to drink much water during the day at work and compensate by rehydrating myself on the way home, which has some pressing consequences - but managed to get back to sleep. I woke up again at 6:00 when my radio-on-a-timer set to NPR went off in the bathroom. (This will play from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM, again from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM, and finally from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.) Unfortunately the radio was too loud and out-of-tune, so I had to get up again and walk the length of the house again to adjust it. I woke again at 8:40 or so when my mom called to tell me that she was heading out to her pool-based physical therapy, and that it was supposed to start raining in a few hours and continue for the next week or so, so maybe I should get up soon if I wanted to do some yard work. I slept again until about 10:00, woke up and made some calls to people I knew would be either at home or in their offices. Then I got up, dragged myself downstairs. ate half a muffin and put the water on for tea, and headed outside to begin my yard work.

What luck, I thought. It hasn't started raining yet.

As if on cue, a huge raindrop went splat on the slate sidewalk to my right. Then another one, behind me. Then a third, and a fourth, and another half-dozen, and then a few dozen more, and...

Crap. So much for yard work.

Well, I could still do some of the work. I walked back inside, slapped on my broad-brimmed canvas gardening hat, grabbed some pruners, and headed back to the rear grapevine.

Both the rear and the front grapevines have managed to produce grapes this year - purple in the back, white in the front. Last year the Black Rot took them all, as it had the past few years. I tried hard to stop the Black Rot this year with regular sprayings of fungicide, but it still took hold. But I managed to slow it down, and that made all the difference. From what I've read, once grapes develop to the 4% sugar stage they are no longer susceptible to Black Rot. I guess a good number of grapes have made it to that stage, since I have quite a few ripe on the vines. At the end of the year I will have to prune the hell out of all the vines and remove any fallen bits that may still bear traces of the disease.

But that wasn't what I was there to do today. No, a number of interlopers have grown up among the grapes, including pokeberry, ragweed, and something my neighbor insists is raspberry, even though the thorny vines haven't produced any fruit. I wanted them out to free up access to my grapes. I shouldn't have to bleed for grapes.

The "raspberry" was the most difficult to remove, with its hundreds of thorns that adhere to anything they touch - skin, clothing, whatever. My first pruners, which I had bought cheap earlier this year, fell apart after a few minutes, so I had to fall back on a fifteen-year-old pair of loppers. I quickly figured out how to safely carry the thorned cuttings by spreading the handles of the loppers fully, turning them over, and lifting up the cuttings with one handle inserted under them at their precise point of balance. (I only just realized how difficult this should have been. Such balancing tricks are second nature to me.)

After about 45 minutes of this my neighbors came out to talk and to thank me for the jar of homemade pickles I had brought over last week. My workday was pretty much over at that point as the rain increased in intensity shortly afterwards and stayed there the rest of the day.

It looks like it may rain for the next three days, which means my lawns - both of them - will go at least another week without being mowed or weed-whacked. We'll see what happens.