14 Dec 2008: 40 days and 40 nights

Headline statistics for the vines are 253mm of rain/irrigation and 153 hours of good sunshine (whatever good sunshine is).

The weather has been really really hot and is picking up early for summer- see table .. err… below

	Average Temp	Average Wind	Average Daily Sun
October	16.9 (Max 30.9/Min 6.4)	13.9km/h; prev. SE	1.8hrs; max of 1234 Watts/M2
November	18.9 (Max 30.8/Min 11.7)	17.6km/h; prev ESE	3.27hrs; max of 1376 Watts/M2
December to 14th	23.7 (Max 34.1/Min13.8)	17.5km/h; prev ESE	4.58hrs; max of 1342Watts/M2

The September average temperature was 12.4 deg C by the way.

It’s Sunday and I still can’t get the dam irrigation to work – so it will have to be municipality water again on Monday night unless the long suffering Johan Barnard of Overberg Agri can sort me out.

Half the vines have now got their grow tubes in place and we await the return of Jake’s chaps tomorrow to finish the pruning and fit the rest of the tubes though I still have to find some more grow tube materials (excess Tetrapak – this time wine boxes)

The growth of this European weed still amazes me though you can see that some of the indigenous weeds are already competing.

Fingers crossed that we get no more leaks and that the pump will work soon.

Is there anybody out there who knows anything about the management of terrapins or conditioning of brackish waters? Please contact me - brian@thedawes.net