Just when the red poppies were blooming, I finally took time to prune a trumpet vine that grows on the temporary arbor I put up a few years back. I made it so that it could be quickly disassembled, because it stands under a massive dead elm tree. I wanted to be able to take it down when the tree was felled and then reassemble it in a more permanent fashion once the mess was cleaned up. Okay, you guessed it. We haven't cut the elm tree yet, and so the arbor is still "temporary". Weathered, but temporary.

The arbor, with no two parallel lines, is living proof that I didn't inherit my father's carpentry skills--but I did inherit his "can do" spirit (this is not necessarily a good combination). Needless to say, the vines didn't grow quite the way I'd planned, either. Instead of covering up the sides and top of the arbor and turning it into a leafy bower, both the trumpet vine and the Aunt Dee Wisteria on the other side developed woody stems with no leaves for their first five feet (the wisteria almost died out last winter and is very puny this year--but hanging on). The trumpet vine, instead of covering the top, insists on shooting straight up for the sky, so that I had to get a very tall ladder to prune it back. While I had the ladder out, I decided I might as well install an owl on the arbor in hopes that he might scare rabbits away. I also hope people will look at him and not the arbor. And part of me hopes the elm tree will fall onto the "temporary" arbor and crush it so that I can start over and do better next time. Do gardens make everyone delusional? Or is it the poppies?