Genoa

On day 2 we disembarked in Genoa and headed to Rapallo where Andrea gave us a guided tour.  We saw the last of the five gates of the original city, the Gate of Salina. Then we went to Santa Margherita where we boarded a ferry to Portofino. There we climbed to Castle Brown and toured the gardens. We finally sampled some local wine, a Chardonnay, back in Santa Margherita at a local pizzeria.

Cold beer?  No...

Marseilles

I'm preserving a few thoughts and pics from our Mediterranean cruise.  I will strive to keep it on topic.

First stop, Marseilles, where we trekked to Lourmarin. There, short of Euros, we met a very kind Frenchman who was there for the Porsche gathering.  He helped us find an ATM. We toured the village and ate some fresh pastries. We found our way to a wine shop and bought a 500 of the dry rose for which the area is known.  The store owner generously gave us a corkscrew and little plastic wine glasses. While sampling the wine, we watched the parade of Porsches, and waved at our ATM friend as he went by.

From there we went to Aix en Provence, had lunch, and made a quick walking trip around town, where the highlight was Cathedrale St. Sauveur.
We had dinner at the steak and seafood restaurant where we were careful to avoid leaving uncomfortably full.  It was however at the expense of a lot of wasted food.

Craft Day in the Garden

We started off in the greenhouse Saturday, and I'm happy to report that 'Kari' continues to show signs of recovery.  Every year is different and interesting.  This year, the second, younger jaboticaba bloomed dramatically, and I think we'll have more fruit from this tree, this year, than we have had from the older tree in its lifetime.  Jaboticaba has become one of my favorite trees.  If I freeze every fruit for 8-10 years I might be able to make a gallon of wine.

First jaboticaba of the year

I was forced due to time constraints to try a new lychee pollination program.  I had little to lose, because the paintbrush method used for the last several years produced nothing.  This year, no paintbrushes.  I just took blooms loaded with males and beat them over and onto blooms loaded with females.  What do you know?  I have about 20 lychees right now.  Some will inevitably drop, but many are already dime-sized.  I do believe we are back in the lychee business.

We have blooms on dragonfruit, citrus, plumeria, sugar apple, and many others.  Dwarf Namwah bananas have started to ripen.

Dwarf Namwah bananas, less the two ripe ones we ate Saturday

We started moving plants out this weekend.  No blooms on the passion fruit yet, but growth is emerging.  My daughter would be tickled to see our solution to the ugly, fragile trellis we had last year.  We found tomato cages at the store for $7.  Add a can of purple spray paint (so that the color matches the blooms) and we have a new and improved passion fruit stand.

Winston can't believe the color

The yard is approaching its spring bloom peak.

Viburnum, katsura tree, and fragrant abelia

Amsonia is filling in the greenhouse bed

The mint is up and that means it is mojito time.  Dinner was mint/red pepper lamb chops, bacon-wrapped home grown asparagus (can you find the stray in the pictures above?) and fruit salad.  With dinner we cautiously opened a bottle of white catawba.  I failed to adequately adjust the acidity preferment on this wine and so the main task became taming the sharpness.  Maybe it was the mojitos clouding our judgment, but this bottle was better than drinkable.

Signs of Life

Birds are a problem this year.  A cardinal has spent the better part of the last 3 weeks attacking his image in one or another window of our house.  And a guinea hen has settled in the area of the backyard.  One of these birds will not see summer.

We are pleased with the progress of our fruit plantings in the yard.  All of the pawpaw trees survived the winter, although the two tallest trunks died back after getting roughed up by deer last fall.  The elderberries are spreading to the point where I'm getting a little concerned they may become invasive.  The haskaps, which looked nearly dead last fall, have set fruit and we may get a pint of berries.  Hoping for twice that output of jostaberries.

Jostaberry blooms

Most importantly, there are signs of life in 'Kari.'  I pruned back a lot of dead branches, but we clearly have a flush of growth.

Weather is limiting garden work a little bit this weekend, but it makes for some interesting views.

Cell moving north-northeast across Fulton

Fraternity Mulch

My friend and fellow YMCA board member Tim also happens to be the chapter advisor for Phi Delta Theta here at Westminster.  Each year they donate some labor to the Y auction and this year it was our pleasure to be rewarded with their time.  What better way for a Phi Delt to spend a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon than spreading mulch?

We didn't have enough tools because we didn't expect quite so many guys.

A public thank you to Tim and the Phi Delts from Westminster!

Wine day

Red Wine Racking Day.

Say that three times fast.

Today we racked all of our country red wines.  They are clear and for the most part, nearing time to bottle, and so it was a good time to sample them.

I racked elderberry batch #3 (3 gal) off of the oak.  This batch was made with straight tartaric acid and had some tartaric crystals.  It begs the question of whether I should cold stabilize this wine.  Probably not.  I doubt it will be chilled much below the temp of the basement this winter.  Color great, nice body, fruity, not too tannic.  Not sure if there is enough oak yet.  May benefit from more oak or finishing tannins.  However, in the words of a former professor, when in doubt, "Don't just do something, stand there."

Elderberry batch #4 (3 gal) came off of the oak as well.  Just a tiny bit of tartaric crystals in this wine, less than batch #3, because this one was made with acid blend.  I can't tell that it is any sharper than batch #3.

The second run elderberry, an elderberry rose (3 gal) may be the best of the elderberry wines.  Very fruity, low tannins.  This one has a couple of bananas for body which are supposed to be undetectable flavor-wise.  I'm not so sure.  But it is not there in a bad way; there is a complexity to this wine that the straight elderberry wines don't have.

Pomegranate/Cranberry (1 gal) is very good.  This wine, I discovered after investigating further, also has elderberry juice in the base.  I likely will bottle this one as-is.

Blackberry (1 gal) is fruity, a little citrusy, sharp, and probably excessively tannic.  This one is not ready for the bottle.  It clearly needs backsweetening, and may need the egg white treatment if it doesn't settle down in the next several months.

In greenhouse, the Carambola 'Kari' (starfruit) is just clinging to life.  I'm not sure what happened.  Very sad.  As you can tell from the background of the blog, it is one of my favorite trees.  This tree has produced dozens and dozens of tasty starfruit.  I have 4 1 gallon bags of fruit frozen, waiting for the next open 3 gallon carboy.  If I lose this tree it will take years before its replacement can produce the same amount of fruit.

Kari in happier times

The Start of the Garden Year

Each year, despite our best intentions, Lisa and I eventually fall behind with the gardens, sometimes sooner, sometimes later.  I can tell which years we'll fall behind sooner, because we get a rough start.  It might be weather, nice during the week and poor on the weekends; it might be travel; but for whatever reason, if we haven't mowed before the feather reed grass shows, we're in trouble.

This year, while it is not yet really spring, the start of the gardening season declared itself with a beautiful 60 degree sunny, windless Sunday.  Lisa spent much of her day strictly adhering to her pre-emergent schedule.  I tackled the mowing.

Over the years I've tried a variety of methods for cutting back the ornamental grasses.  We have the 'Karl Foerster', as well as Panicum virgatum 'Dallas Blues' and 'Rotstrahbusch', Miscanthus sinensis "Gracillimus', and several others whose names escape me.  The miscanthus is the toughest.  I've tried string trimmers, chain saws and other methods.  It turns out that by far the easiest way to handle the spring grass duties with the Grasshopper.  What used to take an entire day can be reduced to about an hour by simply mowing them down with the Grasshopper.

Unless you get stuck.

My good friend Jorgen bailed me out today, and I partially repaid him with some wine.  This morning Lisa and I bottled 6 gallons of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.  This New Zealand wine we made from a kit with QA 23.  It is a little tart, but hopefully it will settle down in the bottle.  Lisa's favorite wine.

Anyway, once pulled from the muck I went on to finish the pool beds, the liriope bed, the elderberry beds, and the grasses around the drive.  And the feather reed grass is not yet up.  In all, a good start to the garden year.

Tonight we're having steak we paid way too much for last night at the YMCA auction.  Although we resolved this morning to drink more of our homemade wine, these steaks require a red, and I don't have anything worthy.  So we've opened some wine club reds, a Spanish garnacha (Grenache) and a Cab from Argentina.

Don't find yourself in this mess.