Sunday, August 12, 2012

Urban Archaeology

Today Tassie turned on the glorious.  A bright, warm, sunny winter's day lifted out of the morning fog - the perfect canvas for brunch with dear friends in our newly paved ' sun trap'.  When they left, it was too nice to go inside, so we stayed. With one of the lads opting to snooze, the wee girl and her wee brother filled the splash pool and donned the bathers.  Yes it is winter.  They were happy.  The girl even told me she won an Olympic Gold in diving.  We sang the national anthem.  I thought happy thoughts to keep me off those ones about pneumonia.... and I pottered.  Dunc welded - mending our soon-to-be-painted 50s outdoor setting (this has taken 4 years - see how motivating winter sun is?)... and I started doing a spot of archaeology.
 When we first moved into our house the back yard was entirely gravel ... it turned out on further investigation (ie when we decided we would put in garden beds) that under the gravel was a foot of compacted road base over black plastic ... low maintenance gardening, eat your heart out. A weekend of a hired 'dingo' digger and we broke through and freed the soil beneath ... but a really lovely discovery lay beneath ... our house is over 130 years old and at some stage someone had added fill ... whilst this fill contained shards of glass ... the bulk is made up of old ceramics.  So whenever we dig, or garden or even just go outside after heavy rain we find treasure.  This treasure gets placed along our fence , along with the old bottles and other interesting finds our soil turns up.  The ceramics, judging by their patterns and thickness vary greatly in age. Some is stoneware,  some porcelain.
Today, after much thought, and a whole lot more pottering around in the sunshine ,
I decided I might actually do something with these little treasures.  This post will have to act as a gentle kick up the derriere so that it is not waiting the same amount of time as the outdoor setting! We shall see!

9 comments:

Nat said...

gorgeous! looking forward to seeing what you do with these treasures...

chrisartist said...

It's been such a great day hasn't it.
Your china shards look great. A wonderful mosaic perhaps?
Chris

CurlyPops said...

That is so cool. Can you frame all the pieces in a box frame as a little memento?

Mrs Smith said...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you Burnses are the bomb diggity! Your house and your garden are such beautiful, warm welcome spaces and you guys are generous to a fault. We are lucky to have you in our lives.

Fran said...

What a lovely added bonus to digging in the garden. They will make a fantastic, history/meaning filled piece of art.

Recycled Relix said...

I can see a fabulous mosaic coming on.... lovely bits to play with!

SmitoniusAndSonata said...

Such treasure !!
Even if you never did anything else with them , you are amassing the perfect crafter's version of the Executive Toy .

Fer said...

Amazing what a bit of vitamin D can do!

Great treasures, we mostly find old bottles at our place.

Nettie's Blog said...

eeewww cant wait to see the top of that outdoor setting table with those little treasures of antiquity on top of it....