Abloom

Earlier this week, the lupine began to grow.  Lupine is my favorite wildflower.  It is a beautiful blue herald of the spring.  A legume, it pulls nitrogen from the air and fixes it in the soil.  With an incredibly vigorous taproot, it drills down into the soil like mustard, piercing heavy clay or compacted soils.  Even Columella wrote that nothing helps an unvigorous vineyard so much as the planting lupine as a cover crop.   We don’t do that so much, it grows wild and the seeds (which are edible, though not appetizing) are expensive.  I’d like to, I would love to have a vineyard about to erupt in pale green growth glowing blue with the florescence of lupine, but, alas, nobody i know is willing to spend the $8 a pound for seed.  Silly, I say.  Stupid, even.  But, ah, what can I do?  I just sing my song to nobody and everybody at once on the internet in the hopes of seducing somebody somewhere to listen to the ancients and sow lupine in the vineyard.  Also, it smells deliciously of pez candy.

The apple trees have begun to bloom in the higher orchards.

And in the warmer pinot vineyards, bud break has begun.  That’s right, the pinot has awoken and though the frost might hit again, or the rain might bring mildew, pinot continues to insistently awake before the world is ready.