The wind-ravaged greenhouse has been tidied up and secured with shade cloth, pegs and ties. However, the ridgepole was discovered to be rusted right through and crumbling.

My sister, who just has to look at a problem to come up with a solution, fixed it. She had a piece of rebar which was being used as a garden stake. She cut it to length, wire-brushed it, rust-proofed and painted it. Today she put it in place, with wedges of cork to make up the for narrower width.

The talent for fixing things is longstanding with my sister and her family. All the children are practical too. For example, an earlier post ‘All hands on deck’ (12/12/22) shows my nephew’s work – helped by other family members – to fix the underpinnings of the deck.

In 1993, my sister and brother-in-law (just before they were married) made the woodshed out of timber from the old porch. You can see from my last post that it is still in use thirty years later.

In an old album (pre-digital) are photos of the work underway, the careful measuring, while the photo above shows the partly constructed woodshed.

The last time I was at their place, my brother-in-law and two nephews were up on the roof solving a problem with the plumbing to the water butts. There’s always a project on the go!