I almost got kicked out of the Spinstercore Gardening Club!
(If you haven’t heard about Spinstercore Gardening, check out this post.)
For those who didn’t want to check out that post, here’s the short version of what Spinstercore Gardening is:
Combine Cottagecore and Grandmacore with Gardening, but not just any gardening, gardening by hiring out the hard work—like edging, mulching, and digging—leaving you with time to snip, fluff, plant, and enjoy your garden without turning your gardening time into an intensive training session for a triathlon or other extreme physical sport.
In other words, garden like Miss Jane Marple, the epitome of a spinster gardener. That’s Spinstercore Gardening.
Anyway, after making a big deal about entering this era of my gardening life and joining the Spinstercore Gardening Club, I almost got kicked out! Why? Because I worked hard in the garden on Tuesday morning, cleaning up the patio, which was full of leaves, then mowing and edging in front. I used four different power tools in the process… a mower, an edger, a leaf vac, and a blower. Plus I planted out four more flats of spring flowers.
It was hard work, and not at all like how one imagines Miss Jane Marple gardening.
But if I hadn’t worked that hard cleaning up the patio, I doubt I would have noticed that loose brick in the patio.
In fact, I wouldn’t have realized that a bunch of patio bricks were loose.
I was a bit puzzled because the patio has been solid since I had it installed about 15 years ago. Solid. Firm. Never even one wiggling or wobbling brick. Solid.
Anyway, I picked up a couple of those wiggly, wobbly bricks, and realized that underneath was some rotted wood. What? There was no wood below the patio when they installed it.
I knelt down and picked at that wood with my gardening knife and found that it was so rotted, it just crumbled into dust. As I continued to pick at the wood, I exposed what appeared to be a hollow cavity. When the hole got big enough to stick my hand through it, I turned on the flashlight on my smartphone and used it to peer into the hole to see what was down there.
I saw stairs! (Not stars! Stairs!) Of course, the hole was still too small to fit through so I could actually go down those stairs. So I moved a few more bricks, uncovered more rotted wood, chopped through that wood, and before I realized it, I had uncovered a large enough hole that I could go down those stairs to see what was at the bottom.
But honestly, I was a bit afraid of just going down there by myself. Who knows what’s down there? Is it an old root cellar? This property used to be part of a farm, so that’s entirely possible. Maybe it’s the opening to a cavern that leads who knows where? Or could I be sitting on top of an abandoned secret hideout of some kind? Maybe it’s full of money. Or bodies! My mind raced as I considered that there might even be some bones down there.
Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I went down there and found bones! I’d much prefer to go down there and find old canning jars, which, because there are stairs, is what is most likely.
Anyway, I’ve wisely decided to contact a local university’s archaelogy team to see if they’d like to take a look first. They would! So here I sit, the day after my discovery, on April 1st (also known as April Fool’s Day) wondering why when April rolls around, something like this always happens in my garden.
Like that time in 2006 when I discovered a new plant, never before named, in my compost pile? Or that time in 2022 when I was able to announce the first winter-hardy tomato? Or back in 2013, when I told the world about rabbit-resistant green beans? Or that time in 2008, when I discovered buried Indian artifacts in the garden? Or 2009, when I knocked over a plant stand and it turned out to be hollow and full of old family papers? Or the major discovery about the big boulder in my garden back in 2007? In fact, I think there’s been a Major Announcement kind of post every April 1st since that first one in 2006. 20 years worth? I guess so! I should find all of them and make a list!
Anyway, it’s finally April, and I’m still a member of the Spinstercore Gardening Club, mostly because I started the club, so I get to be a member regardless of what I do in the garden.
And once again, something incredible, amazing, nearly unbelievable has happened in my garden.
I’ll keep you posted about what they discover under the patio.
(This post is not garden fairy approved.)
Heads up: lovely take on “A Loose Brick Leads To a Big Discovery!” — I’ll try that soon.