finding history on the property

[digitS']

I have thought now and then about starting a thread about what we find in our gardens, from long ago.

It is a little bit of a worry for me (okay, I'm being silly ) that this house may have been built without an indoor toilet. It's hard for me to know. As @moxies_chickenuggets relates in the story about her home renovations, bathrooms were often very casual affairs ... mine may have been associated with a laundry room as best as I can see -- if it was actually in the house. The possibility of an outhouse is a very real one. I once found a glob of paint the size of a cantaloupe in my garden soil! I hope that was not associated with lots of other things further into the ground but it was latex paint so, of more modern carelessness.

Here's what has been found in one of my "off site" gardens where I've been for 20 seasons this year. (If'n I'm allowed back!) If anything, I believe the home has been there at least as long as my own, built in 1901. Numerous marbles but I always put those back anticipating the kids who may live there in the future. My daughter found an Indian Head penny while I was digging out what could once have been a property line on this now 4 lot site. I found a stainless steel square punch! My guess is that it was for making square holes for square nails altho, it may have been for leather .... and there were once many, many square nails in the soil but they are slowly rusting away. Plenty of pottery shards and some ancient broken glass ...

Steve

 

[Carol Dee]

Now our garden lot is another story! It is an old landfill/dump! It has a clay cap. Tough going for anything to grow for the 1st years. Lots of compost and amendments over the years and we are getting there. Of course being what it is we turn up STUFF all the time. Metal, glass, plastic, shoes, doll parts, etc...

 

[majorcatfish]

Major-Am I seeing carved images on that shell?

after reading your post this morning once home did a real close up of the shell... hard to say if has been craved upon??

 

[thistlebloom]

Our old house had some history buried around the property. It was 50 years old when we bought it.
Unfortunately it wasn't anything fun or even interesting. Mostly creepy stuff. The people who lived there before us were some kind of amazing.

After we cleaned the interior out with scoop shovels and wheel barrows we had the septic tank pumped. First we had to find it, and discovered that it had been dug out for pumping at some point in the past and the hole filled back with trash bags full of trash. The bags were rotten and disintegrated when we pulled them out. Full of nasty personal trash, and lots of beer cans. We also found a selection of hypos around under the trees buried in the leaf litter and more beer cans.

There was broken china in bits all over the one acre, like they had been throwing them at each other (?), and after every good rain storm more bits would be exposed. We never found one thing that was of any value. A few handfuls of pennies out in the yard is about it.

I like your finds a lot better Major.

 

[catjac1975]

after reading your post this morning once home did a real close up of the shell... hard to say if has been craved upon??
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I have seen native rock carvings that remind me of those images. (Not in person) May it is a early native love letter.