Prune the Vine

03-23-06
Pruning the Vine

It’s been sunny in Sighnaghi, even 70 degrees during the day. A neighbor finally made me understand what an apricot tree looks like, and I discovered with absolute joy that I have a big, flowering tree in my own yard! This to compliment the apple trees, fig trees, peach tree, plum tree, hazelnut bush, rose bushes, and two black grape vines.

My neighbor, Izo-Deida (aunty Izo) admonished me for not pruning my grape vines. In what I recognized to be a very important initiative moment, she loaned me her step ladder, and climbed the stairs in her own yard so she could see over the fence and instruct me on what to prune.

I gathered my clippers, hand-saw, wire cutters, belt knife, and string, and ascended the ladder to do my duty as a Georgian homeowner. Prune the vine, and join millions of Georgian ancestors before me, in the oldest vineyard tradition in the world: prune the vine.

Izo-Deida picked up two bits of vine, one old and one new, and told me, ‘we want to cut the old ones away.’ The new ones we leave, but prune back to three buds away from their older branch stem. We tie the thick branches to the trellace structure of metal rebar, wire, and electric cable that is holding up the vine over the garden, and bend the newer shoots in the direction we want them to grow, and tie them into place as well.

In the garden, daffodils bloomed for the first time today, and I tried not to trample all the neighboring shoots underfoot as they promise to flower soon as well.

After three hours, the vine was trimmed. It’s a big one, I don’t know how many years old. Maybe six inches thick at the base, with long arms stretching up to the overhead lattice and reaching out thirty feet in some places. I need to build a new lattice over the stairs… what an entrance that will be! So many projects.

Izo-Deida was very proud of me, and confided that her husband ‘doesn’t know anything about vines, it is such a shame!’ Her husband is a super laid back 65 five year old who repairs cars. They have a daughter and grandchildren, their son died in his twenties about fifteen years ago. Gogi is his name, Batono Gogi.

The vine is trimmed and ready; Come Spring!