What does a grape arbor smell like? I’ll admit to having experienced only one grape arbor. My Aunt Lois’ Concord grape arbor was so large, it was a ‘character’ at her Virginia home — as interesting as her moody dogs, her army of guardian Canada geese, and her free-range chickens (one of whom would go inside my aunt’s house and sleep in a dog bed by the kitchen stove; Miss Hinny would doze contentedly even as one of her less-beloved kin baked in the oven next to her).

My aunt’s grape arbor enclosed a large rectangular plot of land and was made of shortened telephone poles, wooden beams, heavy-duty wire mesh and old lattices. Two Concord grape vines were planted next to, and were supported by, telephone poles at opposite ends of the arbor. The grape vines formed a roof and walls, and during the growing season, one would part the dense leaf-covered vines and enter a dim ‘room’ — an excellent place to hide, to spy on people who worked in the surrounding garden, or to sulk…

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