Discoveries

You never know what you may find when you're taming a neglected yard. Of course, had I written those words a week ago I would have thought it would be about weeds, or what survived the neglect and what didn't, even the various bugs around.

Like spiders! Shudder! While no longer phobic, they're still not my favorite critters. However I can appreciate - in my own way - how short-legged the local daddy-long-legs are this summer, or the fuzzy white behind of one spider and the weird shape and colors of another one.

But even that didn't surprise me like my discovery yesterday. Having finished the main front flower garden - for the year, at least - I'd been working on the north side of the front yard, mostly removing buckthorn from everywhere. Needing a short respite,  I sat at the corner of the driveway and let my gaze wander to the fern bed lining the house. They're very tall ferns, and once anywhere, seemingly impossible to remove. I was contemplating the challenges of tomorrow's task, removing a  many-trunked box elder which had fought back to hydra-like life after the main trunk had been cut near ground level some years before, and now rising well above the level of the ferns. 

The real challenge was going to be how uneven the ground was there. When the basement had been dug, the builder left the level a couple feet short so the first floor would be that much higher than the surrounding ground level, mainly so water would run off rather than sheer laziness, I presume. But with only 10 feet to the property line, there is nothing flat on which to set a chair while I am wading between ferns, chopping or sawing branches depending on how thick they've grown, and then painting each new stump with brush killer. And much as my physical condition and balance have improved these last couple months, I still dread both uneven ground and compensating by being on my knees post-replaement. It hurts. So that bit of the job has been put at the end of the to-do list for the area.

After repeatedly glancing at the troublesome spot, I spied something odd. Straight lines. Actually, straight lines of empty spaces between other straight things. In green. Almost like our green resin chairs we use in the yard, but it would have to be lying down at an angle in the middle of the ferns with some of them growing up between the slats in the back. And that would mean that green bit just a ways over would be....

It was! There was the foot of the chair sticking up between fern leaves. Exactly like the one I was currently sitting on, resting and contemplating. Tomorrow was going to be even more interesting than I'd imagined. 

I wonder if it's still unbroken - rare in any of the resin chairs after all these years - or if that might be how it got there in the first place. That, plus somebody's frustration (I'm not saying tantrum, note) with how and when it may have happened.