Garden Archaeology

[poliphilo]

We have acquired a rockery. Actually it was there all along but had become smothered in heather- which Julia is now thinning out. Ailz suggests arranging the sandstone blocks into a doll-sized stone circle...

Comments

[sorenr]

I like the idea of taking something that was there and recreating it in your own style - be it a henge of miniature proportions or something else, elegant of playful. I could see a henge in the heather looking quite charming.

Personally I like playfulness in the garden. I have a grand project of making a completely ridiculous little stream in my garden, lined with stones from the surrounding fields. Not as an elegant garden feature, but as a little boy playing with water, really. (It also gives me an excuse to roam the fields with a large mason's bucket and collect the nicest stones I can find. It's take a while before I have enough! It's a very meditative pursuit to walk slowly across a field, looking for nice stones.)

[poliphilo]

I don't think one should take gardening too seriously. A garden is a space to play in- and make discoveries in. We've been having a lot of new fencing installed and I've been walking the fence line to see what the workmen have dug up. The other day I found a small chunk of pale blue glassy material and have been puzzling ever since over what it might have been part of.

[sorenr]

My house and my garden is really just a big toy - but whereas the house DOES have some things that need to be done in a certain way, nothing can really go completely wrong in the garden. What's the worst that could happen? A wilderness? Well, that could be fun as well!

I'm in the process of mowing the lawn for the first time this year - the spring flowers and tulips in the grass are now spent, and the main flowers are dandelions. (They're also rather pretty, of course.) It's terribly late for a first mowing, but completely intentional. And lawns are boring anyway unless you're playing garden games like boules or croquet.

My most interesting find in the garden was the remains of a cat skeleton in the vegetable garden. Well, at least it was a moderately small animals with fangs, but the bones were so decayed that most had literally crumbled and were only seen as changes in colour in the soil - but the teeth were quite well-preserved. I wonder what state my last cat is in now; he lies under the lawn in the corner with the best view. (And no, I'm not going to dig the remains up to check!)

[poliphilo]

Our lawn just got mowed for the first time this year. It hardly needed it.

I haven't found any skeletons yet, but I did find a very interesting button this morning- badly corroded but with an inlay of what must be gold...