Everything has the patina of age at George Griffith and Thomas O'Brien's summer home near Ligonier.

Vines clamber up the sides of a crumbling silo out front and the screened back porch of the 1848 farmhouse. Ancient sandstone, brick and chestnut join to form the walls and open staircase linking the basement to the first and second floors. And out in the ponds, the fresh pink and yellow faces of newly opened lotus flowers are the oldest of all -- 2,000 years at least.

Today, Mr. Griffith and Mr. O'Brien will host the Celebrate the Lotus luncheon to benefit the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Food and drinks will be served beneath the back porch, and, if it's not raining, hundreds of lotuses and water lilies will open to reveal petals colored white, pink, peach, yellow, red, blue and purple.

The Manchurian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), which was propagated in the 1950s from 2,000-year-old seed found in China, is the star of the annual event (rain day is Sunday). But the house and its inhabitants are as interesting and as rooted in history as any pond plant.

When Mr. Griffith and Mr. O'Brien bought the house in 1978, holes gaped in the roof and floors, a spring was running through the basement, and the only toilet and bathtub sat in plain view in a corner of the first floor. Who would want such a place?

They didn't, really. The two men, partners in the Flower Barn in Johnstown, wanted the centuries-old barn and part of the 75 acres for ponds to grow their water plants. But only months after the purchase, an arsonist torched the barn, leaving only the silo standing.

Undaunted, they and contractor Ronnie Quer got to work on the house, starting with the spring that had turned the basement's dirt floor to mud. The water was rerouted to fill the first of dozens of ponds, and gravel was trucked in to create a solid base for a concrete slab and ceramic tile floor.

Beams from a barn the men bought near Derry were added to support the house's original beams and rafters. Mr. Quer and his crew also used the old hand-hewn beams to build the rustic three-story staircase and finish the first floor. Formerly four rooms, the space now contains a small kitchen, dining area and large living room with one of three wood-burning fireplaces. The polished oak floors on the first and second floors came from the gym in a Johnstown high school.

"We spent a month scraping the wax and other junk off them," Mr. Griffith said.

Upstairs, the original horizontal sheathing was left exposed on the two bedrooms' walls and a new bathroom with green-and-white tile and antique brass swan faucet was added.

The basement, the house's most rustic space, also has a new bathroom that deftly mingles a modern Koehler seven-head shower, granite-slab shower bench, exposed sandstone block walls and an antique marble sink from the Hunt mansion in Shadyside. The sink, a gift to Mr. Griffith from his friend and mentor Rachel McMasters Miller Hunt, is one of several items in the house with a Hunt/Alcoa tie. Others are an early aluminum armchair and an ornate pair of aluminum doors that once led from the estate's loggia to the ballroom.

Much older is a table whose log top is white from decades of use salting hams. Nearby is a 7-foot-long table that can be converted to a bench that doubled as a gun safe. Located by a huge stone fireplace, the table is often used for dinner parties.

The entire house is designed for entertaining. On the wall overlooking their ponds, Mr. Griffith and Mr. O'Brien added a 35-by-14-foot screened back porch. Boston ivy has been allowed to climb the screen, giving a feeling of enclosure but not blocking the cool mountain breezes. The porch is a favorite of their two Welsh corgis, O.B. and Frederika, who rest there before hopping on Mr. Griffith's golf cart to join him for a spin around the property.

The 75-year-old horticulturist and florist, who ships hundreds of water plants every spring to customers around the country, enjoys pointing out the details of his lotuses and lilies. He propagated and named one bright pink hardy lily 'Margaret Griffith' after his mother and an unusual peach flower 'Thomas O'Brien' after his partner. Other unnamed crosses bloom blissfully unaware of their anonymity in one of the eight new ponds he dug this year (he finally sold his backhoe).

Befitting a farmhouse, the Fairfield Township property and their main house in Johnstown have both been home to flocks of chickens. Two roosters -- a black crested Polish bantam and a Rhode Island red -- were stuffed by a taxidermist and are on display here.

"He was a mean ol' bastard," Mr. O'Brien said of the large red bird.

But he wasn't the rooster that attacked a Pittsburgh society matron there years ago. As she was leaving, the rooster flew at her with his razor-sharp talons facing forward. He latched onto her thighs and hung on, flapping as she ran in the house. She had to drop her pants to get rid of him, Mr. Griffith said, laughing.

Visitors for today's luncheon won't have to worry about rooster assaults as they wander among the lilies and lotuses. But they should take a few minutes to admire the house, too. Its owners certainly won't crow about it.

"We've done it very gradually over 30 years," Mr. Griffith said. "Each year we would try to do a little more as we could afford it. It's not much, really."

The Celebrate the Lotus luncheon runs from 1 to 3 p.m. today. Tickets, $75 per person, can be purchased at the door. For information and directions, call the museum at 724-837-1500.