It is quite true. Like everyone else, I should love to unearth a crock of Roman gold coins and we do live near to Roman remains.
To date, however, the most lovely thing I have dug up in the vegetable garden is a brass military button from the Staffordshire Regiment.
I have no idea how old it is but, as you can see, with a lot of hard work, it polished up beautifully and sits in pride of place on our sitting room mantlepiece. It would be lovely to think it was off the uniform of someone who lived in the house and was home on leave from fighting in one of the two world wars – and survived.
Patterns of nature
Nature is quite amazing. Take a look at the photograph of the log which I picked up in the woodshed. I have absolutely no idea which insect it was that made that delightful pattern as it feasted on the green moss but to recreate it, as a piece of decorative artwork, would cost an awful lot of money. We humans do think ourselves very clever – well many do – but when you find something like this it puts our role into perspective.
Learning from each other
Mrs GG and I have been watching one of the robins in our garden trying, in vain, to access the squirrel-proof sunflower heart feeders. The poor little thing tried and tried but simply could not manage it. He looked enviously on as the various tits, goldfinches and other birds made it look so simple.
Then, another robin simply flew up to the feeder, nipped inside and scoffed a fair quantity of sunflower hearts. Our poor little bird sat in the hedge and watched. We have no idea whether the two of them communicated but lo and behold, our previously not so nimble robin, learned the lesson and now he too is a regular visitor inside the feeder. We can learn a lot from nature.
Rabbit-proof fence
Three years ago, I planted a long laurel hedge and to keep the young plants safe from marauding rabbits, who immediately started eating them, I erected a wire fence around the entire area. We called it the submarine and it was shaped like that.
Last weekend I decided it was time to remove the wire and make the hedge look part of the garden. But I did not take into account the strength of the grass that had grown through it. When putting it up, I carefully folded about 8 inches of wire flat onto the grass to stop the rabbits digging underneath. But my goodness, trying to get rid of it was a Herculean task.
At first, I simply tried to pull it up but the grass was far stronger, and I ripped the bottom off the wire and the flat area simply stayed put. In the end, I had to bring out the old grass hand clippers and push them under the wire and snip away. The hedge is about 70 yards long but, fortified by Mrs GG’s coffee, I completed the uncoupling in just over an hour.
Wildlife potential
When we put the laurels in they were a couple of feet tall and now, some of them are well over six feet so it is going to be a lovely hedge in a few years’ time and, I hope, home to a lot of wildlife.
Happy Gardening
The Grumpy Gardener
Read other blogs by Graham here: www.paskettpr.co.uk/the-grumpy-gardener