More found objects

 

    "Digging exposes a world below the surface of the earth [...] Rubble and bits of broken crockery speak to us of men who knew this field before our day. But it is a world that flings us back in time and makes of the clods we turn pages of history, for one day among the marigolds we dug up a local money token of the 18th. century. Relics of Roman Britain are scattered among our earth as broken pieces of brick; they are many, for we are on the edge of the Icknield Way, which was used as a Roman road. Our imagination one day was especially excited by the finding of the tooth of a wild boar. Instantly our garden seemed full of perils, and civilisation shrank to a thin veneer of three inches of chalky soil. We have kept the tooth, and when life grows too respectable and secure, a glance at it reassures us with a thrill of fear."

From Four Hedges by Clare Leighton - her finds were a little more exciting than ours.

Comments

[Ruth]

I love finding treasure, think maybe a bit of magpie or jackdaw in me. Shiny or dull, I always think about who held or saw it in the past, and what tales might they have told. Ruth

[Erika]

Garden treasure: I have wondered for years about the Charles II, of England, coin I found as a child in a Lithuanian chicken run. My grandfather very nicely had it mounted in a bezel for me to wear on a chain.

[Lindsay]

Talking of things lost and things found, I am currently reading - among other things - The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane, and Strands by Jean Sprackland, both of which I commend to your attention. I would have talked to Mr Cornflower about them this morning, but he was keen to leave the breakfast table before the sun rose to make sure he did not miss an appointment in St James's Square!

[Cornflower]

I don't know Strands, but I have The Old Ways right at the top of the tbr pile.
And speaking of the sun rising, when the dogs and I were 'greeting the dawn' this morning, others were still a-bed, I hear ...