Aliens in McMinnville

Every May McMinnville, Oregon hosts the second largest UFO Festival in the United States (largest of course is in Roswell, NM). Why McMinnville? Only because one of the most famous UFO pictures of all time was taken there. That's the first photo. The rest of the pictures are from the Saturday afternoon parade. All I can say is the Star Wars fans will spend serious dollars on costumes, Avatar was popular this year, and I'm still wondering how the dog actually was turned green. And the Pumpkin Cannon, I mean the Alien Defense Cannon, makes me want to take a break during crush and go watch that thing in operation. It's a lot of fun and a huge event in McMinnville. There were thousands watching the parade.

If a Tree Falls in the Vineyard When No One is Around . . .

Here are some pictures of something that happens about every five years - a tree just falls down. This one happened to fall from the neighbor's property and landed in the upper Pommard block. The tree was easily 70 feet+, but it only about 20 feet landed in the vineyard. Amazingly it fell between two posts, so there wasn't a whole lot of damage. About 20 plants, some wires and the deer fence were damaged. Charlie (the dog) had a lot of fun walking back and forth on the trunk. I didn't even know dogs did that.

And no, the logging described in the last entry didn't knock the tree over. This one was done in by some pretty strong winds - there's a huge chunk of ground standing upright at a 90 degree angle around the roots.

Budbreak and Clear Cut

Two interesting and opposite things happened recently. We had budbreak in mid-April and I included a picture looking down a row. You can see all the small shoots. The cover crop was planted last fall and was just disked (sp?) under last week. I'll have to take a new picture. Weather started out great but has been cold - we need some heat to get these plants growing.

Second picture is of what's going on next door. Our neighbor passed away and her children have decided to log the property. You can see the clear cut of the hillside. Certainly won't be as scenic in some parts of the vineyard for a while. I am generally in favor of property rights - the " if you own the land, you shouldn't have too many restrictions on what you can do with it" philosophy, so I really don't have a problem with it. We had a similar clear cut up the hill several years ago and the trees do grow back.