After lunch, today, Lisbeth pruned the two grape vines that grow, one along the wall of the terrace and the other against the house. For those of you in England, and in case you buy a house in France, you may be interested to know that you take off all old shoots leaving the newer ones. Of the newer ones, you select only one (nearest the mother) and cut it back to two buds. The rest you cut out. The other thing to remember is that you don't want too many shoots on the mother, so you cut out everything other than good young shoots approximately 2ft 6" apart. And that's pruning the vine. (I'm aware that this must be sounding like some sort of country dance: a French version of 'strip the willow'!) Anyway, Lisbeth went on to prune other things until it rained. Then we lit the open fire and did a bit of 'being by the fire'. What more could anyone want?
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