Get on your mark...Get set...

This is the week of our Big annual race. Not a relay, silly. No; not a marathon. Nope, not an iron-man race either. You have had three guesses. Give up?

This is the week that the starlings and grackles return to our yard. They have come for (what they consider their own) harvest time. They come by the thousands, and they can wipe out an entire crop of grapes in one afternoon. They are bandits. Each year, we can expect to see at least one news article with pictures of the black birds diving by the thousands into a favorite chimney in this area.

We watch them arrive on a weather front and speckle our yard and skyline in throngs. They load the enormous electrical towers until there is no space for another bird. Once they arrive enmass, we know we are too late to even place our toes on the starting line. Okay, I admit that we have been known to jump the starting signal and harvest some very tart grapes.

There are many methods used by desperate folk to try to keep them away. One local farmer has a recording of a gunshot being fired every little bit.Some years ago, we even saw a carcass of one hanging on a fence. Of course, there are scarecrows, fake owls, hanging CD’s in order to reflect the sun, hanging streamers of video tape for the unfamiliar sound and movement in the trees, and always there is covering with net. This is the protective method we most often choose.

But, this year, our crop is small so we picked them when our family taster gave us the "go ahead.” Granted, the first frost has not yet arrived, but the fruit is sweet this year even before the frost. Yep, this year, we won the race. The crop was tiny, but the reward of tasting the fruits of John’s labor is sweet.