Ahh....water.

It's officially growing season! The Colorado river is flowing through the veins of the Vinelands. The land is turning from a brown, desolate landscape to a vibrant spring green. The vines are thirsty. Time to water.

But before watering, we need to mow, weedwhack, and hand weed. It's always something. Thank goodness that weed killing chemical I talked about earlier did the trick. Instead of the weeds fighting with the budding vines, their brown fronds are protecting the buds from the cold of night. Nice. All except for two rows. Who knows why I missed those rows? Doing goofy stuff like that makes me think of the movie line from "When Harry Met Sally", "I want what she's having?" Must be some good sh*!. Geez.

Mowing is pretty straight forward except I've got to be careful not to fall into the water creases. I fall into the creases on either side of the grape and I get sucked into the hole making the tractor push into the precious vine. I can get close, but not too close. When that happens, my adrenaline shoots up and I'm in panic mode. Save the vine! Save the vine!

Now I'm weedwhacking those two rows I missed for..... whatever reason. Still don't know. Then manually weeding 95 plants because if I get too close with the weedwhacker, I accidentally chop off three years of my life, the vine. I did give one vine an early demise. Breaks my heart. Okay, now on to the easy part.

Watering. Kenny and I move each of the 25' aluminum pipes in place. I hold them in place for the proper water gate location while Kenny pushes the pipe into the upstream pipe. Then we go open the irrigation gate off of the Colorado river, open our irrigation gate, and adjust the water level in our water vault. Next we walk the first three sections of pipe and open those gates. Giving the vines the life giving liquor needed for everyone's happiness. Then I go back up to the vault and adjust the level ....close gates....open gates...adjust the level.....again. Over and over. Meanwhile keeping an eye on the rows, making sure the water in one crease isn't being deverted to an adjacent row. From the standpoint of exercise, its great.

Walk, walk, walk. Bend, bend, bend. I can hear my personal trainer (if I had one) now "Walk the row, back and forth. Come on, put some heart into it. Now bend down and up, down and up. Really bend! Open those gates, close those gates. Hup to it! Put some effort into it." All this exercise for free.

Now half the vineyard is watered. The vine buds are literally popping open as the water reaches them. They are so happy. The air smells of water soaking into the earth. It's smells like life. Somehow comforting and hopeful.

I believe Spanish Sangria is what calls tonight. Tastes good and it's good for you too. Ole.

Remember enjoy and imbibe.