Gardening with a Historian and an Anthropologist...

... makes for very slow work, it turns out!

Even though it was cold and windy out, I managed to convince Scott to help me dig up the garden (with the promise of a homemade dinner afterwards).  Theoretically, it should be pretty quick work, especially with two people going at it.  All you have to do is cut the sod into strips, roll it up, and cart it away.  This went well for the first strip--I was pleased to see that the soil had a good consistency and that there were plenty of worms and grubs to help turn over the soil.  This gardening stuff might turn out to be a good idea, after all!

When I started to pull up the next strip, however, I noticed a small white and blue object.  Upon further inspection, I realized that it was a piece of painted ceramic!  Of course now that I knew there were interesting objects in the ground, this meant that I had to painstakingly comb every strip before taking it away.  Scott laughed at my enthusiasm at first, but once I started pulling out more pieces, he started looking too!  We ended up finding pieces from at least two or three different objects.  I'm a little rusty with my ceramics knowledge (not that I had much to begin with), so I really don't have any idea if they're all that interesting or not.  If anyone has any inklings, let me know!

We managed to get about three-quarters of the yard stripped off, except for bits near the fencel ine that were difficult to cut into.  I tried to dig into one area only to discover a row of bricks buried just below the surface.  The outside edge of the garden it lined with bricks, since the sidewalk is slightly beneath the soil line.  I figured that this row was just from an older garden perimeter that was eventually forgotten and let to grow over.  They would have to be pulled out before we could start planting, so I grabbed the spade and starting digging.  I pulled up about three intact bricks, and went to try to find the next one in line.

This time when I went to pull out the brick with my shovel, I noticed that it wasn't quite as heavy as the other bricks.  I figured that perhaps it was broken, or maybe it was just a stone that got placed instead of a brick.  When I finally did manage to pull it out, it turned out not to be a brick at all!  It was a bottle neck, with the cork still intact (very rotted, but still there).  Our garden is right next to the sidewalk that leads to and from the neighboring villages, so I just figured that it was litter that had been thrown over by a passerby some years ago (although it was strange that they would have left the cork in!).  I put the fragment to the side and continued digging.

My spade hit upon another hard object, so I reached down to pull it out.  It was another fragment of a bottle, but it was a different color than the bottle neck I had just pulled out.  I looked more closely at the hole I had dug and realized that there were dozens of fragments of bottles of all sorts of different colors!  The archaeologist in me started to get excited, and I expressed this excitement to Scott.  Again, he laughed at my enthusiasm, took his obligatory glance at the fragments I'd pulled up, and continued working on his patch of the garden.  I was so excited, though, that I continued to make celebratory noises with each new fragment I pulled out.

Finally, Scott couldn't take it anymore and came over to see what all the fuss was about.  Of course, he insisted that his excavation skills were far superior to mine, took the hand shovel from me, and proceeded to start digging himself.  Turns out he's a natural--he pulled up a large can (maybe a small paint can?), with a small, intact glass bottle inside of it.  This discovery convinced him of the archaeological significance of the site, so he put away his large tools and sat down to excavate with me.  Our gardening plans all but forgotten, we spent the next half hour or so pulling up more objects from the ground.  Once I realized that it was more than just a few pieces of litter, I even started try to map the locations of the objects!

By the time we were forced inside by rain, we'd pulled up an entire bucket full of bottle fragments, four cans, a small intact bottle, a large intact bottle, five bottle necks with corks still inserted, and two more pieces of ceramic.  Scott said we should recycle them, but right now they're sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to clean and date them, just in case they are something to get excited about.  I found a website that might help--it's for dating American bottles, but maybe I can find some good references there to give me an approximate age of the bottles.  It's still really strange that so many of them were unopened, and in the same place.  Someone's forgotten secret stash?

The answer to this mystery must remain for the moment, because the sun has returned (for the moment), which means its time to get back to the garden!

Endeavours in Gardening

So a few weeks ago, whilst staring out the window at the falling snow (in a place where I was assured that it rarely snowed--no, I am not going to let that go!), I decided that it would be a good idea to start a vegetable garden in the back yard.  I do have some experience with gardening, if you count helping my dad with his when I was about 12 years old.  Other than that, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

Luckily, there are perks to living in the old servant's house on an estate--there is a groundskeeper for the whole estate who knows a thing or two about tending to a garden.  I actually met the groundskeeper, Bob, during my first week here when a package meant for Hildersham Hall (the estate owners' home) was accidentally delivered to our house.  I wasn't quite sure what to do, but I just happened to look out the window and see a man clearing the snow on the driveway.  Since I hadn't met our landlord, I assumed that that was who it was.  Turns out I was wrong, but luckily Bob is really awesome and agreed to give the package to the landlord when he saw him.  We ended up talking for over an hour, even though I was standing outside with only my slippers and sweatshirt.  Bob is a really interesting guy, and seems to know a little bit about everything!

A few weeks later when I told him that I wanted to start a garden, Bob helped me scout out the best location in the yard, and even agreed to put down some weedkiller so that I wouldn't have to pull up all the grass.  He came over on a warm, sunny day to spray it.  He finished within about 15 minutes, but once again he ended up staying and chatting for over an hour.  In fact, the only reason he ended up leaving was because I got stung by a bee!  It figures that would happen on the first warm day of the year!  Very strange circumstance, too--I put my hands inside the pocket of my sweatshirt, and was stung on my palm by the bee that had apparently been napping in there!  It's been about a week, and I'm proud to say that my hand is healing quite nicely.  It was starting to itch quite a bit, but it turns out that a nice rubbing of mud really helps with that!

Anyways, after Bob sprayed the yard to kill the grass, he told me that if the weather stayed dry, everything should be gone within a week or so.  Of course, it has rained and/or snowed pretty much every day since he said that.  So, unfortunately, the grass and weeds are still very alive and I now get the oh-so-fun task of pulling them all out.  Luckily, Bob has started a little bit of it for me, because he had to dig up one side to put in the new fence that he graciously offered to install around the perimeter of the vegetable garden to keep out the rabbits.  He even put in a nice gate and painted everything, too!  Have I said that I think Bob is pretty much the most awesome person ever?

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After a week of watching the rain fall and nourish the grass that I was attempting to kill, I finally gave in and decided to pull up the grass myself.  This doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but it turns out that a plot of 25 by 15 feet is actually pretty big.  Also, I only had a spade to work with.  I started to dig up a bit with that, but after an hour of work I'd only managed to sort of move the dirt around in about a 4 by 4 area.  Luckily, Bob tends to also have great timing, and he showed up just in time to see me ready to give up in my attempts.  He showed me how to use my spade to cut the sod into strips, and even lent me his antique sod lifter to make rolling it up even easier!  With this new tool, I was able to remove about a third of the grass in just about an hour!  Even still, I definitely got my work out and can assure you that I'll get a good night's sleep tonight!

My progress so far.  I'm pretty proud of myself!

Now, I think I'm going to wait until Scott can help this weekend to pull up the rest of it.  Turns out that dirt and grass can be quite heavy, so he also gets the honorable task of moving the rolls of sod that I've created.  He'll be so excited to hear the news!