We’re Starting a Vineyard, Part 15: A Weed, a Ladybug, and a Beetle

Like an excited virgin, I run through the rows, digging up seedlings, and surviving. I survive the first bud bursting forth, the first weed, the first ladybug or other beetle.

I take photos, “upload” them to Facebook and in the heat of the moment, possessed mercilessly, I run on, love me, wonderful land!

I don’t know how to describe the word “grind,” so I’ll simply write: “grind, reset, cold shower.” That’s because I miscalibrated the tractor cultivator and pulled it so hard that suddenly half the seedlings are buried deep beneath a layer of beautifully loosened soil. Now I have to go and dig it all out by hand. It’s the twentieth row, it’s pouring rain, and I still have ninety rows to go. What I did in four hours without realizing it, I’ve been undoing for three days now. In moments like these, I won’t tell you where I’ve got a beetle, a ladybug, or a weed.

And all of that is a piece of cake, because you constantly have to think ahead about what grass to sow, what to spray the emerging bushes with so they don’t get too well, what hoe to use for weeding, where to store it all, and, no less importantly, where to find a watchdog to save our shed from the fate of the local rental company. Details, details. Sometimes I get lost in them and forget what I did yesterday. I call a guy to buy some oil radishes for the rows, and over the phone he tells me what a coincidence, because he already sent some to a guy like that near Rybna last week. A moment’s pause, that was me.

Yet there’s something magical about what I do. When I bend down to brush the seedling aside for the second time, as gently as a beloved child, when sweat pours down my forehead and my pants fall to a hip-hop pantie-style—even then I know it’s absolutely worth it.