Malbec

Well here are the first lot of vines and it's made a day that started off pretty horrendously improve no-end!

What kind of a day has it been then. Well P got out of bed determined to get a treatment in and then promptly reversed the tractor into the outside tap, breaking it and sending water pissing everywhere! Cursing loudly he went in search of a stopcock which he couldn't find. About 4 mins later and a couple of hundred litres of water later I found said tap and stopped the flow!

Oh well we thought we'll use the pump to fill the sprayer which after about 15 mins of wrestling we managed at the EXACT same time as the tractor started misfiring.

P, it has to be said lost what passed for his sense of humour at this point.

The mechanic is on holiday. We need to treat and to have the tractor ready for tomorrows onslaught of planting. At this stage it was all pretty catastrophic and P had a face like a slapped arse!

After a long of confusion I rang the guy we brought the place from and asked for the name and number of his friend who is a "sometimes mechanic".

Phone calls made, JM turns up plays with the tractor, does a lot of revving and announces that we need a new "Pompe alimentation de gazoil" which I have to write down after twice asking and twice forgetting... also a new oil filter.

Without much hope we trundle of to the fantastic chaps at Chansaulme who pick both items off the shelf and say that'll €86 please.

I then call lovely mechanic bloke back, who says alot of things very fast that I don't understand and says goodbye.

I dither, the vines arrive delivered by a very lovely chap and then I pluck up the courage to phone M. Le mechanic back who says (very slowly) he'll be here tomorrow at 8.30am..... HURRAH.

I shouldn't be counting my eggs or chickens or uncrossing anything yet.

BUT our vines are hear and arn't they lovely?

Planting and other things.

Well they're here, busy inserting marquants into our rotovated, fertilised and now-dry-enough-to-not-sink soil. The plants are due to arrive Thurs am and hopefully by the weekend all 7000 of them will be in!

We've been so stressed about the whole thing and everything has been conspiring against us... well mostly the weather so I'll be massively relieved when its over.

The rest of the vineyard, it has to be said, is looking amazing at the moment and I'd say that we've finally got it looking like it should as a matter of course, not like it was looking when Dominique had put several years of concerted neglect into it.

P has cut the grass, I've strimmed, he's rongered (not sure how it's spelt but pronounced Ron-yeah-ed) it all. We've still to treat again this week and I've still got a couple of parcelles to de-pampe (de-shoot) and then we'll put more weed-killer down and it'll look perfect again.

Except (there's always an except!) for the cabernet sauvignon that is riddled with Esca (black measles). This used to have a treatment option but they're withdrawn that (probably quite sensible as it was an arsenic derivative). So unless we want to spend a ruddy fortune (€9 per plant) for an injection that might or might not work, we'll be ripping them out soon. Pity that's where we mostly put the new piquets.

What else has happened? Well I had a very curious conversation with a frenchman in his tractor... yes yes lesson number one, but I wanted our verges cut properly...that proved that old cliché, that frenchman are indeed obsessed with sex.

Amongst talking about his kids, how long we'd lived here, how our neighbour was doing post surgery, he informed me that, whilst my French was very good, the only way to learn French well was to go to bed with a Frenchman. He followed this with informing me that it wasn't necessary to be faithful to ones wife, as life was too long and it all got too boring. Good then, well that's my vocabulary expanded into areas I wish it wasn't. But then again we do have beautifully cut verges.

Stress

We are now battling with the weather again. This year for the opposite reason to last year. We have too much rain. We now have to cross anything and everything that it dries out a lot so that we can re-rotovate to get rid of the proliferation of weeds that have grown in the three weeks since we last did it! And that it's stays dry enough that the replanting tractor doesn't sink.

On the plus side my french must be improving, four phone calls today and one face to face. Mind you not sure it's what might be called accurate french!