Stepping into the garden this morning was the usual pleasure…in this case the pleasure of high summer in a gorgeous garden…a cool summer morning, a riot of blooms…

but pretty much immediately I knew something was afoot…

the skilled volunteers have the slow and tricky problem of replacing all the wooden members of the gorgeous grape arbor (without disturbing the vines)…board by board.

during the Strands’ years in the garden their son Dale had carefully tried to preserve the arbor and it’s original fabric…

but these “fixes” have now rotted as well…another solution involving concrete bases so wooden members are not in contact with the soil…as well as pressure treated wood for the bases…

It’s slow and painstaking work but they are making headway…and then there’s the matter of paint…

Stay tuned for a progress report.  One more glance…