Saturday 12 April 2008

Buried Treasure

Stepping backward a couple of weeks and I was about to mow the large area I want to incorporate into the garden. I had only done about three quarters of the first tour round when the ride-on mower gave up. It had in fact shed the drive chain and where it needed to be reset required dismantling of most of the rear of the mower. Not a job for me as I don’t have the tools or the knowledge or the time. Ann and Regis to the rescue again and they took the mower to someone they know how repairs mowers. Two days later it’s back, repaired and serviced, but have I been out on it…of course not. The grass is far to wet and I’ve now been told that if the grass is over four inches it’s better not to use the ride-on. The grass was of by now at least 6 inches tall and growing visibly.

I thought about hitching up the topper and running round with the tractor but in the end decided that the time it would take me to un-hitch the plough, wedge it securely upright, hitch up the topper, unhitch the topper and re-hitch the plough ready for the next piece of field I need to prepare would be significantly longer than using the walk behind mower. It only took a couple of hours and was quite enjoyable, I think I appreciated the work out after being indoors for so long.

In the process of going round I lost a nut and bolt I’d put on to help hold the handles on. For some reason nothing has ever stayed put in that place. The original bolt lasted about a month and then I put it back every other week for a few months until I lost it completely. I didn’t think I stood a chance of finding the nut, bolt and two washers from this go but for a laugh got out the toy metal detector I bough my daughter when she was much younger.

Sure enough, nothing, until I got to the area I mowed after I’d seen I’d lost the fixings. The detector gave a long clear buzz, I moved my steel toecaps well back and checked again; it had really found something. All my old dreams of becoming an archaeologist and finding buried treasure came rushing back and I raced back to the house to get a trowel.

I started digging and hit a flat metal plate about 2 inches down, at this point I mused about UXB’s and decided to proceed very carefully. I finally excavated my treasure but I won’t be donating it to the Louvre, just to the dechetterie, as it was just a flattened old steel drinks can.


2 comments:

Georgina said...

Hi Deborah, I've got this lovely image of you in your steel toeys with your sleeve rolled up! Why is it whenever you get ready to do a job, which you think will take half an hour something malfunctions. That small job ends up wasting a whole afternoon. My neighbour says it's the Dordogne curse. I'm a bit more realistic and say it's coz we all have more equipment out here and it gets USED! We found a cow shoe with our detector, an of course mushrooms. Debs

dND said...

That curse has spread to Lot et Garonne! May rant about it today, if I don't cry :-D

The car is an Espace but it's a diesel and it needed the timing/cam belt changed which is a major job plus bits like a new water pump. The hope is that that should be the last really big service for 200,000 kilometres or so - we shall see!

I liked your mushroom detector, now if you could tune it to distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous ones you'd make a fortune.