November updates
I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last update and we’re gearing up for Thanksgiving already! Most days this fall have felt like we skipped straight over the mild 70’s and 60’s weather and hurtled into the 50’s because it feels much chillier than usual by now! Maybe it’s just the move an hour and a half north of the city or this is a particularly cold year.
Aframe:
Let’s see, minor projects here. We have pantry doors in the kitchen and spice racks, finally! Once you see the spices I have (pictured below) you’ll realize that storing them while waiting for the racks was a nightmare…so many spice boxes. Very thankful we got these installed.
We started adding the beam wraps in the living room! They’re adding the nice rustic warm touch we were missing on the ceiling. Our front window wall is all trimmed out and painted. This was why we went ahead and installed the wood for the beams because we had to bring in our giant ladder to reach the windows and ceiling to install the ceiling fan; we wanted to tackle all the impossible to reach tasks at once.
We also installed some baseboards and toe kicks in the kitchen, so I got to paint the kitchen island and baseboards are up next!
The well house roof went on and we installed two tiny windows and a staircase. We still need to stain the exterior, I’d like it to look a bit grey and weathered and not the yellow pine you see, but that will come.
Vineyard:
Our vines are finally going dormant in our Avondale Estate* block! They’ve actually stayed green into early November with just the lower merlot block yellowing, now reddening. But this weekend we saw the Vidal and Albariño rows yellow as well. Incredible how long they hang on compared to all the other surrounding foliage.
We’ve mainly been focusing on spreading more grass seed before the temperatures drop to protect the soil and are relishing this brief time we have of no spraying or pruning etc. The heavy duty pruning won’t begin until about February.
We are, however, beginning to think about our new planting block, the Atlas Estate* block. We’d like to get ahead of schedule there so we’re not scrambling in the spring like we were this year. As soon as our grass gets nice and thick we’ll begin to mark out our rows and auger holes for posts.
Lastly a few fall scenes around the property and both unexpected and expected visitors.
*We’ve officially named our two vine blocks! The 2021 plantings are on one hill and 2022’s plantings will be on the next hill over connected by a narrow ridgeline drive through the forest. “Avondale Estate” is in honor of the little house we sold in a little town of the same name in Atlanta which basically funded the start of this entire endeavor. “Atlas Estate” ties together all our travels and overseas living that inspired us and educated our palates way before we knew where we would end up.
