old glass apothecary bottles, a really old oil can. the little kind you pump the bottom on. square head nails.
years ago I wanted to be an archeologist (always wanted my hands in the dirt.) and this is the closest thing I've gotten to it. Not that this is related but we were putting in some wall heaters in our older 1940's home and dh was cutting the walls and found very old toys in the walls. a doll, truck and a rubber clock. I was ready to tear all the walls out by then. he wouldnt let me, but it would have been so much fun!

Just this week I found an old Indian arrowhead in my garden. I showed it to my kids, and my 6 year old son promptly taped it to a stick and started running around with it. That's the first arrowhead I found in the garden, so I was quite pleased.

I found a beautiful sea shell in the hillside as I was digging out the old rock wall. So was Opelika under water in the past ?? LOL...nah..I think it is probably from children in the distant past playing out here but you never know and it makes for an interesting daydream while I dig !

I haven't found anything in my gardens down here in NC but my parents had a place up in SE PA that had evidently been a dump in the early 1900's for a couple of fancy hotels. They found a wealth of jars, bottles, silverware, china, ect. When they moved most of it went to auction - bummer. I wasn't into all the 'garden junk' back then having just a postage stamp yard and two small children. I do have 6 really neat electrical insulators from telephone poles that they dug up. I treasure them.....

Lynne

trailrunner: I'm from Cape Cod originally and like to have sea shells in my garden. I bring them back from trips to the coast. Maybe a future gardener will find them and wonder, too. A lot of older homes around here are up on piers. When I was on a house tour in Galveston, someone had completely covered the crawl space under their home with sea shells. It looked so nice.

gottagarden: I keep learning of people who find arrowheads. I used to look all the time, but never found any...too near-sighted probably.

flowerchild: Have you ever seen that tv show (HGTV, I think) about homeowners and what they've uncovered behind their house walls? I love finding traces of other peoples lives--inside or out.

The only things I've found in my garden are glass marbles and bits and pieces of old china. Our neighbours found an arrowhead when digging a spot for their carport. Actually I don't think arrowheads are easy to spot unless you know what they actually look like.

A......

Fun thread!! We found a cannon ball, small about 3" in diameter when we lived in New York State. I packed it to move but, unfortunately, it got "lost". I also found quite a few shell fossils. I think it would be great to have them dated somehow. The only thing I find in Dallas in my garden is clay....Karen

An Indian arrowhead (one son is an archaeologist).

This is the site of a 200 year-old dairy farm, so we found 16 inches of decomposed cow manure under the meadow grass! :-)

I knew I was in the right place when the building crew complained of the smell! We looked at the soil where the footings were dug and there was nothing but rich dirt on top. Didn't hit a single rock. Of course, builders always scrape away the good stuff, so we hauled in dump truck loads of new gardening soil.

Cameron

I bought my childhood home, so the stuff I dig up is a hoot & I recognize it! Mostly old toys and cars my brother had either left outside or blew up with firecrackers. Lots of hot wheels and pop can tabs for some reason.

Cameron, decomposed cow manure?, I'd say you uncovered a gold mine! :o)

A......

Welcome back, Pianolady.

How exciting, you've all found really cool stuff. It's like finding treasure I would imagine.

Marbles are collectables, it would be interesting to have them dated.

I've never found anything although my dog found (and brought in the house) a huge old white bone the size of a persons leg. Kind of freaked me out.

treelover- the name of the HGTV show is house hunters and I love it!! My husband and I own a construction business and he finds old stuff when he does remodels and brings them home if the homeowner doesnt want them. my home is decorated in old junk! he brought home 2 antique stoves from the 30s. one blue/creme and one pink/creme. the blue one is on our back patio and i use it to display old tea pots with flowers in them. He built my greenhouse (the little one) out of old windows and I make potting benches with the windows also. havent made any in awhile.
its all a blast to me!
Tanya

I once found an old wrench - it had a wooden handle, so it must have been pretty old....i don't think they make tools with wooden handles anymore.

An entire junkyard!We were digging a pond and ended up having to pay $1500 in dump fees to remove car parts,glass,concrete and construction stuff. There were some cool things like old soda bottles and farm implements but most was pure JUNK!!!!!

We have half a millstone that the previous owners of our house dug up a long time ago. They kept an arrowhead that they found. But I have found things like ornate iron shelf brackets, a strip of metal with three or four bells on it, tractor parts, antique car parts, and mangled silverware. I also uncovered an old-fashioned cultivator with one of the wooden handles still on it. The most interesting thing to me that I found is all of the flat rocks that are under my flower beds in the front yard. When I dig them up, I use them as edging for the beds. I just leave most of them in the ground, though, because they are so big and heavy. I thought it was a little odd that they were all so flat, but I didn't think too much of it. Then one day I found out that they supposedly used to be part of the area they used to turn the carriages around on back when this house was a stagecoach stop.

circa 1825: A millstone would be neat...have you found a way to use it in a garden? Were the big, flat stones you found slate? Some of the older sidewalks where I used to live were slate...felt so good to walk on in bare feet. Much softer than concrete.

Good grief, goldenpond, that sounds like the crawlspace of my house. I filled a dozen trash bags with junk that I hauled out from under the house after we moved in. Figured that kids must have had parties under there.

lynnencfan: Up in central PA where I came from, all the old farms seemed to have areas that had been used as dumps...but most of the good stuff was cleaned out of them years ago.

Apparently our yard used to be all swampy and was filled in by the previous owners. It was dirty fill and we constantly find broken glass, nails and beer cans. I did find a spot though that had tons of that "60" birthday confetti and found a pair or oarlocks in another spot. I also found a cool old doorknob that looks loke petrified wood (but I think it's just sealed really well) in the woods behind our house.

This is a fun post.

The space behind my garage was used as a construction dump for our early 40's house, so it is full of rusty nails, glass, stucco chunks and bits of broken bathroom tile. I've gone over every inch of my beds, digging down to a depth of 16"-18", screening out crap that could be dangerous to gloveless hands. We've found about six to eight marbles.

But the most touching thing we found was when we took down our rusty old shed. We were digging a new bed in its place when we found a rotted wooden box with a blanket in it. The blanket, you guessed it, contained dog bones. We carefully wrapped it back up and buried it a little deeper. I pictured some family sorrowfully having a little funeral for him/her. Somehow I like to think it's a guardian spirit over my garden, and it likes what we've done to its home.

Boondoogle, what a good heart you have. Someone took great care in burying their pet. Brought tears to my eyes.

Edna

This was virgin woods when we bought the land. So the only things I have found are arrow heads.

And a "tooth" from the ditch machine that dug the water lines.

I like to watch "If Walls Could Talk".

The only think I have found in my yard was a 1946 nickel -- my house was built that year.

Our house, built in 1989, was the site of an 1800's farmhouse. It burned down in the 40's and the land was sold to developers in the 70's and 80's. The man who owned all the land that consists of our neighborhood and one across the street lives behind me.

We constantly find nails, horseshoes, and old farm parts, marbles, a metal container of toothpaste, perfume bottles, an old hubcap and really ugly pieces of fabric. My 10 yo dd has a metal detector and loves to dig holes searching for treasure. I seem to have accumulated a bunch of rusty metal I'm not allowed to throw away.

The foundation to the old house is in our backyard so I'm always hitting huge foundation blocks. They are pretty neat b/c they're not machine made but most are too big to get out of the ground.

Once I hit a barbed wire fence about 1 1/2' underground when I was digging a new bed. It just keeps on going, though all the posts are blackened from the fire.

Some of the farm critters were kept in the backyard so I have great loamy soil where it should be red clay. I'm not arguing though, I love it!

I found an arrowhead as a child but have long since lost it.

Heather

Broken glass, lots and lots of broken glass. Most of it seems like window glass. The windows were replaced here maybe in the 80s or early 90s and I wonder if they had cheap help do it that smashed the old windows up. Also, lots of what was used as "landscape fabric" but really looks like trash bags to me. Obviously done to suppress the weeds which can are fierce here but just awful. Before I really went around and made an effort to remove alot of it the yard looked like a dump with trash bags sticking out of the ground flapping in the wind. Please think very long and hard before doing something like this. Use something biodegradable. I also found a whole pile of sea shells buried up against a rock wall. I have often wondered about the back story here. My imagination is much kinder than with the other "finds"

Like Pianolady, my husband and I bought my childhood home, and he's found old square nails and a couple of marbles while digging new plots in the backyard. However, the neatest thing he found wasn't exactly in the garden, it was over the wall. We live on a bluff and the area behind the wall is open scrubland and is the easternmost part of the Ballona Creek Wetlands (this portion was owned by Playa Vista then sold just recently to another builder). DH went over the fence to clear away a clump of ivy that had rooted in the field.....and uncovered the blue and white Schwinn bike I got when I was 6! LOL.....it's totally rusted up, but we've kept it....kinda hard to throw it out after having found it again.

This...

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:667592}}

Steven, that's big little guy is called a Jerusalem Cricket. I wonder why they gave it that name?

I think I'll be having nightmares of that Jerusalem cricket!

I haven't found anything too interesting in our yard/gardens. When we moved in it was all grass and weeds, but at some point someone who lived here loved impatiens. I find plant tags all the time, and I think 90% of them are from impatiens.

A lot of the tags are in our backyard which is full sun, so maybe the number of tags is a result of all the replacement plants they had to buy after frying the poor things.

All I've found besides worm, dirt and rocks, are tennis balls. Three of them. I'm thinking the previous owners had a dog that liked to bury his toys. :-)
Rett

We put a new patio and walks a couple of years ago at our house, which was built in 1837. The soil that was removed was good soil, so I had the guys put it in a big pile behind my garage. I actually dug through the whole pile looking for artifacts, and found a lot of pieces of broken china that looked like Blue Willow transferware, and some of a cream-colored china. Also, in another part of the yard, when digging down several feet to plant large B and B trees, I found old handmade nails and a piece of hardware from a horse bridle.

I'd love to get my hands on a metal detector to do some more sleuthing.

This house is less than 30 years old and was built on a hillside in cougar/bear country, so there wasn't much opportunity for anyone to bury anything here, and they were unlikely to stick around long enough to try. The oddest things I've found all involve fill material that was used to "level" the yard, and it's all in the nature of construction debris. The hardest to deal with was a chunk of concrete that I found 4 inches below the surface in prime planting territory that was 4 feet long by almost 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. As you can imagine, it was hard to move.

My DH has been living here longer than me and he found (while building a fence) a huge old cedar log buried in the soil. And I mean huge! This area was forested regularly ages ago back when cedar was considered trash wood. Instead of collecting and using it the lumberjacks would cut down huge trees, burn the stumps and leave the enormous logs where they lay to just rot. Considering the price of cedar today, it's amazing to think that anyone ever had the nerve to do such a thing.