Until the harvest...(#rhizo14)

Rooted in the hillside, laid out by the unknown, cut back year in year out, vines stand starkly against a winter sky.

Who will tend them? What will be the fruit of the labour? Left alone, they will wither, gradually overgrown by brambles, littered with haphazard débris.

Here, the villagers had plenty, the valley floor was fertile, their energies fused to bring home harvest, to share out produce, to mark the seasons. Twas back-breaking work, lightened by a sense of purpose, a sense of place, a sense of connection and rugged song.

Custom was embodied in the lie of the land, to each his role: child, young adult, parent, ageing peasant, village idiot. Their commons was bound by story recycled, hardly to renew year in year out.  Rebirth was miraculous, harvest was greeted with due respect and dance.

Phylloxera,
irritating name for a devastating bug, caught them unawares. Carried from across an ocean, an uninvited stowaway on a merchant ship, their annual vintage was devoured from its root up.  Cellars were emptied, an ecosystem was irretrievably parched.  The harvest would be paltry that year.


A house on the ridge was built. It was undeniably grand. It loomed over those terraced vegetable allotments just up the lane in the Bedat valley. Their stream once diverted, turned mill and machinery. A turning age asked for rubberised wheels. Seasons flew, harvest on harvest withered. Echoes of song and dance remained....miraculously...resistant.

Just along from the dairy, a bell would set to swing an unfailing rhythm. Hope was sown among assembled company for better dreams abroad. Their futures would learn reach beyond simple frame of season. Drilled instruction, revision, separation, children were set to learn modern lessons for a widened 'scape. Their fragmented rhymes were cast far afield.

Our vines stand starkly against a winter sky.
Who will tend them? What will be the fruit of our labour? Left alone shall they wither, gradually over-grown with brambles, littered with haphazard débris?

Our vines await a dance anew...