The last of summer...

...and the beginning of autumn is revealed in the color of the trees on this section of Montgomery Drive, my main route to downtown and the Pilates studio. The pink and lilac trees are Crape Myrtles. Like so many of the plants and trees which thrive here, they are native to India, northern Australia and southeast Asia. They bloom in a variety of colors ranging from white to a dark burgundy in late summer into fall. The tall tree behind them is some kind of maple which is showing its full autumn color.

I also thought this was sort of an interesting picture for its display of the infrastructure required by most towns...cars, street lights, electric wires and garbage bins waiting for the big trucks with remotely operated lifts that grab the bins and dump the contents into the back of the truck. It reminds me of the videos of big trucks in action that we used to watch during dinnertime when Will was still in a high chair. Those weren't just garbage trucks but construction vehicles in action. Now we don't need a video...we're surrounded by them!

Many of the earth movers and dump trucks have finally finished their work around here, and are being replaced on the roads by big trucks carrying crates of grapes from the vineyards, where they are harvested at night, to the wineries for destemming and crushing. The crush, as this hectic period is known, is quite late this year due to our wet spring and cool summer. It promises to be even more hectic than usual as workers hurry to harvest the grapes before the rains come next month. The harvest is always a sort of sleight-of-hand between reaching the right Brix level which measure the sugar in the fruit and the cooler weather.
Walls of crates, about the size of a tea chest can be seen stacked next to the vineyards waiting for the vineyard workers to fill them.

Why, you might be wondering, do they pick the grapes at night or early in the morning?  If they are picked during the heat of the day and dumped warm into crates, they begin fermenting on the truck and need to be cooled when they enter the winery. Another purely practical reason is that big double trailer trucks on the highway during rush hour are not such a good idea....

Most wineries have vineyards in many different locations scattered about the county from the cool coastal areas to the hotter inland valleys like our Sonoma Valley. Each area yields a different variety with a different flavor profile. We have many conversations about whether one can tell the difference between a $15 bottle of wine and a $100 one. Or how much one is influenced by the price or the design of the label...