After lunch, our main task in the afternoon was putting up a new, quite sturdy arch in the garden to replace an old one that was beginning to rust away. In a new, clear position, this would have been fairly straightforward but we had the complication of plants around the old arch – a rose on one side and a chocolate vine entwining the other side. That called for a balance of delicate manoeuvring along with the brute force of banging the post-digging pole into the ground while avoiding both thorns and fragile stems.

Next time we have to do something like this, I’ll definitely want to see if we can wait until winter’s relative bareness but we managed to complete the operation without damage (to us or the plants). That said, this one is thicker metal and the design takes more precautions to keep the water from getting in, so hopefully next time will be a long time to come.