In the garden: My yard could be a treasure trove of lost items
I found my snips the other day while shovelling fresh compost around a few shrubs. They’ve been missing for months. I have others, but these were my all-time favourites: small, tough and would cut anything from wire to thumb-size branches — thumbs, too, probably, if I were not careful.
I knew they were in the garden somewhere, but where? I do have a habit of tossing things down, usually when I need both hands for something. It would help if I had fashionable garden clothing, maybe one of those classy jackets all covered in Velcro strips with hooks and loops for hanging tools from, but they never quite make sense to me. I’m supposed to attach the contents of the shed to the jacket or pants before I venture into the garden?
I much prefer to travel light, ambling back and forth to the shed whenever I need a different tool. I mean, if I’m going out pruning, I won’t be needing a bulb planter. And if I’m shovelling compost, it’s not as though I’d need a lawn rake hanging from my belt.
Oh, yes, that is where I found my snips — in the compost. Sadly, they’re rusted worse than the fenders on a ’72 Lada. Clearly, my compost is powerful stuff. I’ll try to restore them, but it may not be worth the trouble.
My snips were not the only thing missing in the garden. I still can’t find my machete.
A what, you ask! Yes, I have a machete. And yes, I may refer to my garden as resembling a jungle at times, but mine is a lightweight thing that couldn’t hack through a stand of bamboo even if Rambo were wielding it. I use it for chopping stuff up before it goes on the compost heap.
I don’t always do this as it isn’t essential — just depends what mood I’m in. Nothing to do around the yard and I’ll set up the tree stump and begin hacking away. It’s really quite stress relieving, whittling old hollyhock or delphinium stalks and stems down to size, especially ones that didn’t flower the way they were supposed to. What I should do is wave the machete at them when they are still growing.
Anyway, I can’t find it. It’s definitely not in the compost. I know because I sorted and screened the whole pile last weekend. My best guess is that it’s found its way into the garage, which is a bit of a lost cause now that I’ve dragged in pots of plants to overwinter.
If not in the garage, the only other likely place is under the patch of English ivy that’s establishing control at the bottom end near the veggie garden. If it’s in there, it will have to hack its own way out because I can’t see ripping out the ivy — I’d need a new machete for that.
I’m thinking I should maybe get one of those metal detectors. Who knows what I might unearth after 25 years of losing things around the yard. I know there’s a trowel or two out there, a dibble, a Phillips screwdriver, and all kinds of bottle caps — I have a habit of tossing them into flower beds to provide a little iron content for the soil — seriously. I suppose if they last, they will someday provide an archeological review of the drinking habits of an early 21th-century gardener. No, they weren’t all mine and they weren’t all beer bottle caps.
Another source of curious items is the bags of leaves I bring in from the neighbourhood to produce leaf mould. There’s always the odd artifact that was raked off someone’s lawn. I’d like to think my backyard could be a treasure trove of historical objects, but it’s unlikely as it was just a cornfield not that long ago.
There is one particular item, however, that I’m certain is buried there somewhere. I lost my wedding ring about seven or eight years ago. I think it was when I dug out the crab apple tree. It’s long been replaced, but I still hope to come across it some day, just as I did the other day with my favourite snips.
