Found in the Garden

Photo: It felt like I was in an episode of Lost when we unearthed the air vent.

 

As you may know (I say it often enough) I don’t tend to dig the garden.  I rely on nature to do the hard work for me and have found that earthworms do a far more thorough job than I could.  There are times when a bit of back breaking digging is needed and Julie usually obliges..bless her cotten socks.  She was out digging some very invasive roots out of the new veggie patch recently and came across an interesting find.  Lifting a large concrete block, revealed what has turned out to be an air vent for our next door neighbours air raid shelter built in the Second World War. The shelters were constructed courtesy of a local engineering factory for its employees. The factory valued its workers and didn’t want to lose them in a bombing attack; thankfully they were never used for the purpose. Our two houses were built by brothers who didn’t mind about crossing each other’s land boundary, hence the reason for it being on our side. I am happy with it being there as it’s my bargaining power if we ever have cause to use it. Our neighbours couldn’t use it if the air was blocked off.

Natural Wonders

There are always natural wonders to find in the soil when digging.  Nature is very diverse and always throws out a strange looking creature for us to photograph and put on our Facebook pages. According to Stephen Fry, the best place in the world to discover an entirely new species is your own garden. In 1971, biologist Jennifer Owen carried out a very long term study in her own garden in a suburban house in Leicester, England. She found 533 different types of ichneumon wasp, 15 of which had never been recorded in Britain and 4 where completely new to science. Naturalist Gilbert White said nature is so full and varied that if you want to find the place with the most variety, it is the place you most study. Just take in small piece of land and examine it hard enough. Interesting Plants too can surprise us by turning up out of nowhere, we found an avocado in the vegetable patch one year, courtesy of the compost bin. 

Non Natural Wonders

There have been some non nature objects found in gardens.  One woman found her long lost wedding ring after a carrot grew inside it. She pulled it out of the ground attached to the root. 

Wayne Sabaj from the USA went out to his garden to find some broccoli to go with his grilled beef for dinner. There he found among the peppers was a duffel bag filled with $100,000 in cash.

There have been reports of unearthing old wartime bombs and ammunition; one bloke in the UK even found a prisoner of war camp was found in his garden.  Staying with war things, a jar of gold coins dug up in a garden 70 years after it was hidden from the Nazis sold for €100,000. Having spent nearly 70 years in the ground, the so-called “Hackney Hoard” of US Double Eagle gold coins was found when a hole was dug for a frog pond in the garden of a residential care home.

Your Treasure

I’ve been asking around to see what other things of interest we have dug up in our patches.

• Moira: “Farmer Fred in Norfolk found Roman coins and asteroids in his fields.”
• Annie : “I have a collection of old pottery chard's that I have dug up over the years.”
• Lesley : “A Chillington hoe unearthed by pigs many years ago - the hoe is a brilliant tool.”
• George : “ I buried a Deer head in the garden once and hit it with the Tiller the next Spring.”
• Julia : “I live on an old dairy farm and I dig up horse shoes and bits and pieces of old farm equipment...”
• Ruth: “I always wish I would, but nothing more interesting than an old penny and an old marble! Wish I would find a buried treasure sometime!!”
• Carmel : “ I kid you not, an old anchor! I have no idea where it came from - I live in Terenure, Dublin, so not too close to the sea.”
• Fabienne:  “We found once, an old broken ivory pipe, here in Donegal, Ardara, where we live.”
• Philip: “When we lived in uk , I found various old coins from digging my oldest is a 1936 one penny.”
• Kathy: “ Our landscaping crew dug up a 1 meter diameter saw blade. Hard to plant through it!
• Ken:  “When we moved into our 1st House back in the 70's I was digging the Foundation for a Shed in the back Garden when I unearthed a new Wheelbarrow and 2 Bags of Cement, The Barrow earned its keep for many years but the cement ended up as filler for the Base.”

Not everything we find in interesting though. One woman found radon in her garden after she had spent thousands landscaping it. The council came in and bulldozed everything.  Worse still is the story of a couple returning from holiday to find 93ft of their garden has been 'STOLEN' by property developer who ripped up century-old trees and flowerbeds.  

I’m happy with my air vent.