If one imagines a vine’s activity, commencing after the harvest, speeded up in the manner of a time-lapse botany film, and the twelve-month cycle were reduced to one minute of film, the director would say, “Lights, camera, action!” and nothing would happen, because from late October until early April a vine is dormant. It would stand as sculpted by the early-winter pruning. Generally speaking, you would see the gnarled trunk with four arms or branches nearly amputated to leave two eyes or buds remaining on each one. In the film we would wait ten, twenty, almost thirty seconds before witnessing
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