The first day of Autumn is here and signs of it are starting to show up around. There are hardly any birds around and the night songs of critters are slowly dwindling, and the Katydids are gone. Squirrels are busy and the nights are becoming cooler, nice crisp air that I love for certain. The not so welcomed critters will be here as well, stink bugs and the large migration of Japanese lady beetles. That is one thing I certainly dislike about the season.

A nice start to the season that I have been waiting for a few years now has finally materialized, and that is the harvesting of grapes from our one and only grape vine. For me, this is significant because I bought the lonely plant at Aldi’s at half price and almost dead. I just wanted to give it a chance. I planted it and it took well. The first year it just grew and spread its branches, the next year a few single grapes showed up but nothing to hope for, and on the third year a significant number of grapes hung from its large and steady branches; however, as they grew and matured approaching harvest time, all grapes disappeared overnight. I blamed deer but we had a fence. My neighbor was disappointed as well because we were waiting to taste the grapes. My husband and I decided to trim the plant all the way and retrained it to get it away from the fence. That meant another year without grapes. This year, I could see all the grapes, tons of them, and I was fearful that what had happened once would be repeated. I kept tasting them every few weeks to be sure when to pick them, but I missed the perfect timing, after all, it was my first time harvesting grapes. I skipped a few weeks of tasting grapes, and in the process, I lost a ton of them that were ready, many. However, the wasps, bees, and butterflies have been enjoying the mushy grapes, and not all was lost because the vine produced so many grapes that we were still able to collect a wheelbarrow full. We rinsed the grapes three times and kept a large bowl for us and gave the rest to my sister and neighbors.

I learned a few things during the process: never give up on a plant just by looks, it was an exercise in patience, butterflies love grape juice, who knew? Expect to deal with many different critters during harvest, and mushy fermented fallen grapes smell like strong wine. It was certainly an interesting process. My sister tasted the grapes, and she said that the taste was similar to Chateau Morrisette wine, which she loves. She got the largest bag of grapes, of course. Here are a few pictures of the little vine that could.

In hindsight, I also learned that one’s life is a bit like a grapevine. I hope you enjoyed this post and that it inspires you to plant a tiny grapevine.