I find sitting under a grape vine profoundly peaceful. It is probably an evolutionary thing, like staring into a campfire. The sunlight filters through the leaves in the late afternoon and when they are ripe enough, the grapes themselves become translucent and look lit up from the inside. The vine on my back deck is doing very nicely this year. These are green table grapes. Most will go to squirrels, birds or wasps, but we will get to eat a few clusters and they will be quite delicious. The squirrels cannot rob me of my current joy of sitting like some contented character from Homer or Ovid beneath my own grape vine.
The purple Concord-style grapes at the back of my little garden are doing less well, at least insofar as producing a crop. I was remiss in trimming that one and perhaps that is why. The vine itself is running away and a good part of the fence is lost underneath it. Grape vines like to be pruned, and a thorough trim after the first frost in the fall promotes vigorous growth the following year. It is important to snip off growth low to the ground in the spring since grapes are prone to mold which can sit in the soil and attack low, new growth. If you want to try to eat what you grow and not simply wallow in the green dappled light your vine casts, you can trim back branches and leaves now to try to ensure that clusters get additional sun and all the energy goes into the grapes.
Photo: Getty Images / Michele with a camera
Every spring my grape vines amaze me simply by coming back to life. Nothing looks deader than a grape vine in early spring. Then one day you find it putting out its pinkish, green new growth. I remember the first time I really was taken with the beauty of a grape vine was far from the Aegean. It was on Fourth avenue in Vancouver at the Naam restaurant. They had a lovely courtyard which — in my mind’s eye at any rate — was entirely shaded by an enormous vine. I was a callow youth and never considered what the vine might be until one late summer day when I went to eat pecan pie only to discover hanging, globulous grapes everywhere.
Purple pitcher plants.
Photo: Getty Images / Egor Lintvarev
Purple pitcher plants
I went to visit friends in the Laurentians this weekend. We swam to the far side of the lake and there I had the pleasure of seeing a crop of purple pitcher plants in flower on a small moss-covered rock. They are one of our local carnivorous plants. I am pleased to see that they are called oreille de cochon in French. I have not made a study of pigs’ ears but this seems more whimsical than anatomically precise. The first part of its scientific name, Sarracenia purpurea, was for Michel Sarrazin, a surgeon in New France in the 17th and early 18th centuries, who was also something of a botanist and who sent a sample back to Europe. Whatever their name, and despite their diet, they are quite beautiful in flower. I prize my garden’s own indigenous insectivore, Jack-in-the-pulpit. My neighbouring troop of little boys — all under ten years old — take morbid delight in it each year.
1001 Pots
Photo: quebecvacances.com/en
1001 Pots
Finally, if you happen to find yourself in Val David before August 16 may I suggest you take the opportunity to go to 1001 Pots? You don’t need your friendly, neighbourhood garden columnist to recommend a ceramics fair, no matter how lovely, but with your five dollar admission you can visit the garden display space of Kinya Ishikawa which is worth it even if you don’t care for ceramics at all. It requires wandering down several narrow paths but you will be rewarded. The highlight of the garden (aside from Mr. Ishikawa’s beautiful pottery) is a series of moss garden displays including a dreamy wrought iron wagon that serves as a planting bed. No grape vines, but charming nevertheless.
Jeremy Wexler is an avid amateur Montreal gardener and reader of garden writing. His regular columns for The Suburban.com speak to dedicated home gardeners, interested beginners, and people who are happy to simply read and never get their hands dirty. If you have a question, a tale of woe or a favourite plant, Jeremy will read everything you send to jeremywexler9@gmail.com
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