Grape picking with Mel. I don’t get to see her nearly often enough.

I want to plant a grape vine in my yard, and also a fig tree. For everyone ‘neath vine and fig tree shall live in peace and not afraid. There were so many years in my life where I felt like I was constantly in battle against something or someone, and I was afraid all the time, because nothing in my life made sense. Back then I did try to plant a fig tree, and it made it through most of a year but then succumbed to drought. I planted a grape vine but it just didn’t seem to like where it was planted and it didn’t grow. I used to joke that I could seem to manage just one or the other in the garden – so perhaps I could live in peace, or not afraid.

Grape-picking isn’t like anything else. Picking strawberries is fun, but it’s awkward and hot work. We picked grapes early in the morning, with the chill and fog just lifting and the grass still wet. The grapes are grown to be exactly eye-level, and if you duck under the vines and look up, you can see the sun shining through the clusters so they look like green and purple stained glass.

It’s alarmingly easy to fill a bucket.