Hunting for Treasure~~

When we were dreaming of buying an old house, the dream included going on treasure hunts through ancient out buildings, spots where summer kitchens once stood and restoring past landscaping....this old house only gave us one out of three.....! There are no outbuildings remaining as part of the property, there was no summer kitchen to speak of...but boy have the gardens revealed some treasures.

First there were the hundreds of bulbs we found buried beneath years of blown in dirt....each spring more of them worked their way to the top where they could use the sunshine to bloom once again.....as we worked the grounds, we found amaryllis and replanted them properly to allow them to bloom; we found day lilies and hurricane lilies...and we found bricks....lots of them.

The bricks were around trees, in the middle of the yard under grass, weeds and dirt; they were in every single garden we tackled in our attempt to restore the landscaping....the old farmer across the street saw our piles of bricks and told us the story....

About 30 or so years ago, the county decided to tear out the old cobblestone roads that ran near the farms of this section of our little town....they gave the farmers permission to salvage all the cobblestones. The families divided up the stones and carried them home to use them in a variety of ways....with a little bit of detective work, we were able to determine what the stones had been used for besides just garden scaping....

We used the first bunch of them we found to make a fire pit...this pile is the old firepit which as of now is not a firepit....that's because we're moving it a few feet more into the interior of the back yard...last year's fencing in project ended up with the pit too close to our fruit trees...that re-laying is next on the project list.....

The second bunch was used to extend the front porch steps......which were built using the salvaged cobblestones when the front porch was added on (because of eminent domain what is now the front of the house WAS the side of the house).

This stoop you see was the original entry stoop to the house...the cobblestones were laid and then concrete poured over them....we can see that this is how it was done because of the deterioration taking place there now. The door this stoop provided entry to was removed when the old front porch was enclosed to make a sleeping room for old Mrs. B...just before her death in the early 1980's.

This pile of bricks will complete the extension of the current front porch stoop...most of the bricks have the makers mark on them....

Some of the bricks we dig out are from the now missing chimney....the PO's tore it down and apparently just left the bricks lying in the garden and then ran the upstairs plumbing in the spot...or maybe there was a sitting area there once upon a time.....I'd much rather the chimney still be there then this old pipe but it will be coming out with the completion of the downstairs bathroom reno....

Anyway....finding old cobblestones is not quite the same as finding the old McCoy Made in the USA vase in the barn, but they sure come in handy.....