Fine band. Maggie Bell, who sang backing vocals on Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story. For which she should get a knighthood Or sainthood Or both. Not actually crows…
A bit NQM, but anyway… Zipped down to a plant market in Maikammer, around 90km south to help my mate Frank the Potter to pack up his kit and visited…
Or. Life’s a beech Bloke down in Dexheim doing some serious winter prepping. Or maybe he sells the stuff…
A matter of perspective, of course. The Rheingau vineyards from the vantage point of the sculpture park on the Bingen side of the Rhine. VW bus included…
Depends on one’s perspective, of course.. Closer-upperery, it’s possibly quite large… VW bus in the Roseneck vineyard opposite Bingen. (90 minutes/30km on the bike, so it still counts as Mainz.…
Last couple of kms uphill from Mainz to 220m ASL through (early) blossoming fields of Brassica napus subsp. napus. Back in a previous life as a suit, I’d often finish…
Another 2k. It got worse……. But Type 2 fun – just look at the blue sky…
…of winter cycling. Somewhere down there is a concrete farm road. Somewhere…
…Orbis.Well, not quite accurate – it’s actually Urbi et Orbi (“to the city and to the world”) – and Orbis, a small town in the Palatinate with a population of…
There are red grapes with white flesh. That would be Pinot Noir plus a few others. That’s one of the varieties they use to make champagne. Which is…basically a white…
Riding through the fields in Hechtsheim can be quite traumatic….
“Waste not, want not” is what my granddad used to say. Sloppy stuff seen during the Grumbeerernte*. Local dialect for “potato harvest” What was that? You thought they’re called Kartoffeln…
…blowing bubbles. The bubble machine at the Eulchen and Friends Biergarten in the courtyard of the Kurfürstliches Schloss (Electors’ Palace). Eulchen beer, wine from the Weinraumwohnung, catering from Brits KWIZIN,…
A bit like a Scheurebe, but without the shyness.” Talk about plays on words….! The girls working at Eva Vollmer’s vineyard hoolie in Mainz-Ebersheim the other week wore a variety…
…..Grade 1 through 5. Fresh out of the ground. Could have nicked it. Didn’t. Grown under foil, you see….
This is the asparageous equivalent of battery chickens – cover your asparagus mounds with plastic (black on one side to warm them up, white to cool them down) and sell…
Looking over Rheinhessen’s vineyards towards renewable power generation on the distant ridge. Ugly as shit, but hey, they’re subsidised….
The cycle track along the Rhein takes you past some interesting stuff, but none more impressive than the massive floodgates (fish belly flap gates, if you want precision…) set into…
This is Jürgen Hofmann’s 2013 Eselspfad white burgundy Prune the vines to focus on one shoot, manage the canopy to let the grapes breath freely and get good sunlight, cut…
…doubtlessly another excellent wine from Jürgen Hofmann. Twin bubble air lock
..said Mother Beech to Jimmy Sapling. “Mister Forester will come along, chop you down and pile you up with all the other naughty trees…”
Pick your own pansies. Katrin Eder, responsible for environment, energy and transport in Mainz, comes up with some good ideas. Last year, they planted veges instead of the ubiquitous bedding…
…berry mild weather at the moment…
Arborially speaking…
Lo-tech greenhouse. Sort of….
Try ’em/like ’em. buy ’em at Appel Happel in Lerchenberg
So when’s the last time YOU saw a haystack…?
Harvest aftermath
The recent plague of babies population explosion around here has left us with a surfeit of storks (I have it on v. good authority that that’s the collective noun.) which…
Grasshopper, actually. They grow them big around here – this one was the size of a small dog. I kept out of the way in case it mistook me for…
Mainz Daily Photo 