"Here we go again."

That was the header of an email sent by Mary Wilson to her fellow Seaside Green Team volunteers.

She had just learned that Cal Am subcontractor Monterey Peninsula Engineering would be tearing up the same lovingly tended patch of public garden that they destroyed last summer.

"He said they have discovered a problem with the valve they put in last summer - the one near the corner, in the garden, and that they're going to have to dig it up again," she wrote June 25. " I asked him if it would be as large an area as before and he replied, 'Could be.'"

Wilson waged a rescue mission in the garden the next day, June 26, digging up and potting some of the plants that would be ripped out. By Monday, June 28, the work crew was parked on the garden with a bulldozer, digging a large hole in its effort to fix the leaky valve.

Cal Am has praised the Green Team volunteers for their work on the cheerful drought-resistant garden on the corner of Fremont and Canyon Del Rey boulevards.