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 This used to have a treatment option but they're withdrawn that (probably quite sensible as it was an arsenic derivative).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.
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