At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [49]
“Actually,” Paul said, bending back a twiggy offshoot of a vine, “these vines aren’t in bad shape. You’re lucky they hadn’t started to bud before the freeze hit, though.”
“They go on forever,” Lori said, stepping high over the crunchy brown grass and knotty roots that made the ground uneven. “But it gets a little thick back there close to the woods.”
“I can certainly see what Lindsay meant by the amount of work it would take to clean this place up.” Paul paused and looked around, eyes narrowed in the bright sun. “Still, if these are the original vines—or remnants of them, anyway—it might be worth it. You might even be able to salvage the original vinifera.”
“What’s that?”
“It takes a special kind of vine,” Paul explained, “called vitis vinifera, to make wine. But the problem with letting a vineyard go wild like this is that the vinifera are constantly in danger of being contaminated—through pollination by bees and other sources—with more pedestrian grapes. Before long, they’re no longer the original cabernet or shiraz or merlot, but something else altogether.”
Lori said, “But the good ones are the vinif—whatever you said.”
“Right. But only if you want to make wine. If you want to make jam . . . well.” He spread his hands expansively. “All it takes is grapes.”
He added, “It seems a shame, though. It takes years to establish a productive vineyard, and here it is laid to ruin. Thomas Jefferson actually brought the first vitis vinifera to Virginia, did you know that? He thought Virginia could be one of the finest wine-producing regions in the world.”
“How did you learn so much about grapes?”
“My dear, you live with a wine expert for ten years and you’re bound to pick up a thing or two. And all those tours of Napa didn’t hurt.”
Lori bent to pick up a stick, switching it back and forth in the high grass as they walked. “Not that it matters,” she said, a little dispiritedly. “It was a stupid idea, anyway.”
“What was?”
“Making jam out of wine grapes.”
“I don’t see anything stupid about it,” objected Paul. “A trifle ambitious, perhaps, especially from Bridget’s point of view, since she’s the one who would have to be in charge of manufacturing, but as an overall concept it seems perfectly sound.”
“That’s just the problem,” Lori said. “Everything I come up with sounds good in theory, but when it comes to execution . . . let’s face it, I’m a total screwup.”
Paul shot her a quick incredulous glance. “What are you talking about? Aren’t you the one who came up with the idea that saved the sheep from freezing to death?”
Lori grimaced. “I’m also the one who came up with the brilliant idea to shear them in the first place.”
“So, one little mistake.”
“It’s more than that.” Lori focused rather grimly on slashing through a feathery stand of wheat grass with her stick, and then she cast Paul a hesitant, uncertain look. “Can I tell you something?”
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“But you have to swear not to tell my mother.”
He chuckled. “When I was your age there was a saying—‘You can’t trust anyone over thirty.’ Now that I am over thirty I’m here to tell you with absolute certainty that the axiom is absolutely true. We’re all terrible finks, and you can’t trust a one of us. I won’t keep secrets from your mother,” he told her, “especially the important ones.” Then, sliding his hand into the stylish slit pockets of his camel coat, he added, “Of course, I don’t tell her everything I know, either.” He looked at her tenderly. “What is it, princess?”
She stopped, chewing her underlip, and for a moment she wouldn’t meet his eye. Then she said, “The thing is . . . I don’t think I’m very smart.” And then, as though she were afraid he would dismiss her, she rushed on, “It’s not that I don’t try, and it’s not that I don’t want to get things right . . . it’s just that everything somehow gets all muddled up in the end. It’s like college. I told mom it was boring, and I wasn’t learning anything, but that’s not