Where you a junior garden archaeologist?
I spent many a happy hour as a kid digging up the family garden looking for treasures!
Armed with a large metal pudding spoon and a small brush I would brave the dangerous pampas of Mum's borders and set to.
Alas I never found any Iguanadon shoulders beneath the dahlias - they must have all avoided Preston - but I did find loads of pottery: white glazed pieces; brown earthenware chunks and the occasional floral swish.
But by far my favourite finds were blue Delft, small samplers of light blue and white hinting at the simple beauty of pastoral Holland; windmills, milk pales and all.
Once all my bits and peices were washed I'd glue them in swirls on hessian-covered boards for display.
Happy days! ha ha
Indiana Jones had to start somewhere! Were you a garden Indy readers?
I do remember digging sometimes and you are right, blue and white pottery shards appear to be a major constituent of the Earth's crust and yet geology texts ignore this!
ReplyDeleteha ha, yes, the blue and white Delft layer, its obvious to us 'kids'!I reckon adults regularly went into the garden and smashed a handful of their finest bone china for no apparent reason! The tea must have been awful!
DeleteIn Burscough, the fields and earth is choc a bloc with glass, pottery and millions of clay pipe stem fragments. Apparently, this is due to the barges taking fresh veg into Liverpool to market, the filling up with refuse and night soil to spread on the fields, as ballast for the boats.
ReplyDeleteAmazing! I love clay pipe fragments! I used to find then in the Fens when I lived there for a year. They were from the Dutch water man making the dykes. They were very fragile, almost throw away items. Disposable pipes! ha ha
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