'Time Team' explorations

'Time Team' Explorations

Having discovered the edging stones yesterday, I decided to explore further this morning. The edge went about 12 feet before ending as abruptly as it began. But to the right of it, I found lots of paving stones, some at jaunty angles, others flat to the ground. At first, I thought it might be a broken paving stone ‘graveyard’. However, one stone is definitely a threshold type of stone. I think there were probably steps here at one time, but I am not sure how the paving stones match with it – it’s all a bit odd really. Maybe when I am renovating that part of the garden, I will discover a bit more about it.

Having dug out the ‘steps’, I was now left with an 18” hole where the old path used to be – the earth path we use regularly to get into the vegetable garden with the wheelbarrow! 

To the left of the hole, there was a flattish bit, but covered with old broken bits of slate and – you guessed it – nettles! Shame we can’t eat them; we’d never starve, but there’s only so much nettle tea two people can consume, assuming you actually wanted to in the first place.

So this afternoon, I set about clearing the mess so we still have a path through to the vegetable patch. It was backbreaking work too! The good thing about having all that rubbish on the path is the nettle roots were only shallow; the bad thing is that it takes so long to remove it all before you can pull up the weeds!

Why so many bits of slate, I hear you ask? Well slate wasn’t the only rogue item – there was also a lot of rotten wood. When we first moved here, there were two pigeon lofts built onto the back of the garage, into the roof. Local children used them as an easy access into the garage itself, so we had to have them removed and the roof re-slated. The slate and the rotten wood pile is the debris from those pigeon lofts.

I also found a quantity of sachets of weed killer that had been taken from the potting shed, probably about the same time as the sink in the shed was destroyed. It might not have been exactly ‘inside’ any more (the shed was falling down), but that didn’t mean anyone was welcome to take what they wanted. In addition, there was a window washer, a pasting brush and a broom handle – all taken from the shed L It might go some way to explaining why we wanted to move.

So now there is a huge heap of slate (well, two heaps actually), and a huge pile of nettles and ancient wood waiting to be burned. The slate will come in useful if I need to fill plant pots – well, they do suggest using broken slate in the bottom!

But there is a fairly clear path through to the vegetable patch. Just need to shift the pile of slate to join the other pile, so it's off the path. Pulling nettles by hand is seriously hard work!

Now, as to the compost bin – no, it isn’t quite finished, so I’ll post about that tomorrow J