Muscadine Time!

It is raining here everyday.  The ground is saturated and the garden, grass, and landscaping is growing very quickly.  The muscadine vines have spread out this year farther than they have in years past.  I'm going to have to think about how to trellis them better.  Many of the muscadines are ripe and ready for picking.  The muscadines, heated in the summer sun, are sweet and rich and so tasty.  I poked my head under the canopy of the vines to begin picking.

I should have been more optimistic in my container size, though.  I filled up the little quart-sized container in no time at all.

I brought these in to Tricia in the kitchen as she was preparing supper.  She started munching on them.  The grapes are filled with seeds - three or four in each one, but the flavor and sweetness is intense.  I grabbed a bigger container and headed back out to our mini-vineyard to pick.

As I was reaching in the foliage and pulling out handfuls of grapes, all of a sudden, something caught my eye.  What in the world?  Wasps were flying all around me!!  I took off running, spilling my muscadines in the process.  It must have been a funny sight for the neighbors to see me high-stepping like that.  I never got stung, though.  I still have a little pep in my step.  Would you look at that wasp nest tucked away up there?:

Now, this was a dilemma.  I didn't want to get stung, but I didn't want to leave the muscadines unpicked.  I had to kill them.  But how?  A cup of gas would do the trick, but I don't want gas or any other poisons on our grapes.  Aha!  I went back inside and got a cupful of warm tap water and mixed Dawn dishwashing liquid in with the warm water in a thick solution.  Then I stirred it up.

By the time I got back out there, the wasps had settled down and were back on their nest, laughing, no doubt, about how they made me run and spill all my grapes.  I'll have the last laugh, though.  I crept up to the wasp nest and doused it with warm soapy water.  Bullseye!  The wasps couldn't fly with the thick soapy concoction on their wings.  They fell to the ground where I promptly squashed them.  I pulled the nest off of the vine and through it to the ground.

I flipped it over to view that red, bad boy.  He's dead.  

Now in peace, I was able to continue my muscadine picking.

There's a pretty good bit still left on the vines.  I'll need to harvest every afternoon.  I noticed that the birds have discovered the ripened grapes.  They leave the skins of the grapes on the ground beneath the vines.  We'll keep picking each day until they're all harvested.  Then I'll research on how to properly prune muscadine vines.