While walking down our driveway to check the mail, Tricia and I noticed the skins from many grapes on the blacktop. I immediately thought that the many birds in our yard (blue jays, cardinals, mockingbirds) had been eating our muscadines! But upon closer inspection of the grape skins on the road, I realized that they were not muscadines but our neighbor's grapes that are on a trellis near our driveway. Those birds have been plucking the grapes off their vines, then flying over and sitting in the limbs of our live oak trees while they eat.
Observing that reminded me that I needed to check on our muscadines. The week prior when I inspected them, they were beginning to turn purple. Close, but not ripe. On the way back from the mailbox, we passed by the muscadine vine and looked in. Some are now ready to pick. Not all of them, but we'd better pick the ripe ones before the birds get them!
I began to prune back the branches with no fruit on them allowing us access to to the interior of the vine to pick all the purple fruit. We had to keep a sharp eye for wasp nests in the vines. Those things love to build their nests in there and then fly out to sting you if you don't kill them first. Fortunately no wasps this time.
As we pick, sometimes unripe ones come off with the ripe ones.
Tricia ate a few as she picked them. Muscadines have 2 or 3 seeds in each one so there's a lot of spitting when eating these. They are juicy and sweet. Our first picking netted a good bit in a colander.
We'll snack on these and then head out in a few days for another muscadine picking session.
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