Thursday, March 8, 2012

Garden Artifacts

I took these pictures a few weeks ago and forgot to post them. This is the collection of interesting items we (and the chickens) have unearthed in our yard and garden over the last eight months (not including about a million shards of glass and plenty of other plain old garbage).

(Click to Enlarge)




Sparkplugs, keys, a drillbit, nails, hinges, a hoe head, matchbox cars, you name it, we've got it! While in reality I know this stuff is now trash, I like thinking about the history of this place and wondering how long ago someone might have dropped something random for us to find, or when there might have been children living here to drop their toys (or whether those were thrown over the fence by the kids next door). And maybe some of these things hark back to a day when trash was just piled in the backyard or an empty lot before the house was built. Who knows? We have found umpteen key blanks, and finally solved that puzzle when we received a piece of mail addressed to a former resident with "Locksmith" after their name. And this afternoon when I went to visit the chickens, I found a new artifact, and it took me ages to realize what I was looking at- a small porcelain doll's head, from the 50s or 60s!
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It was very cold this morning when I walked to the bus stop, but this afternoon it was 60 degrees and gorgeously sunny! I took a good long walk around the neighborhood in the late afternoon to soak it up- the first time this year that I could be outdoors in short sleeves and be entirely comfortable! We're headed back to rain tomorrow, but it's supposed to stay warm. After a hard frost two nights ago, I'm looking forward to some mild weather, and I'm sure the garden is too.

We lost a baby rabbit this morning, it had managed to crawl away from the bunny pile to a corner of the nest box and got too cold. The mama rabbit didn't intervene- unfortunately they're not the best mothers. But all the other babies have opened their eyes, and are extraordinarily cute now. There are gray ones and black ones, and one that is white with light brown patches! Our second doe was due to kit last night, but didn't. She is showing all signs of being pregnant, except for the actual having babies part. We'll see.

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