Lots of old toys and car parts. I wish I'd find the diamond ring I lost out there!

Our veggie garden area was obviously the previous owners (of at least 50 years) trash pile. We have uncovered old bottles, such as medicine bottles, Vicks vapor rub, tons of pieces of old crockery and plates. But my favorite, now mind you, DH has been plowing and tilling this area for 22 years, is an old light bulb completely intact and we only discovered it a few years ago. It now has a ribbon around it and goes on the Christmas Tree every year. Yeah, even my Christmas Tree can't escape my junk finds.....Terry

Nigella... Find someone with a metal detector to look for the ring. See if you have a shop in town that sells the equipment and ask the shop owner if there is anyone that might look for you. Most of them like a challenge and a lost ring is a good one. Maybe offer them some plants for their effort. Also tell them they can keep anything else they find such as coins etc. If you lost the ring in the yard, a good MD will find it. I have two MD's and was learning last year but had a back problem and it was too difficult to carry. I will start doing it again in a couple of months. I keep dreaming of finding diamond rings and other treasures left on the beach. lol

The only thing of interest I found in my yard is golf balls and lots of sea shells. The prior owner played golf and left balls in most every corner. After a couple of years, I think I found most of them.

Let me know if you have success finding the ring. If you find someone with experience and with a good MD, you will find it... and anything else made of metal that you lost.

Cheers,
Carole

Unfortunately, I keep finding garbage that was dumped previous to my house being built. I found a 5 ft by 3 ft piece of a sidewalk buried at an angle. It took me hours to dig that thing up and two neighbors to help me lift it into a dumpster.

I found an Indian head penny one time when digging in my flower bed. I also "unearthed" a patio made out of beautiful fossil limestone.

Tons of bottles! They are neat. They apparently were for advertising or recycling because each bottle has the address of a local business embossed in the glass!

Worcester Bottling Company must have had a dump in my backyard! It all looks harmless....hair tonic, perfume, milk, soda....

Saucy

saucydog,
That is really interesting. I love finding old bottles and other glassware, provided of course that it isn't broken.
Le Jane

I've lived in my house for about 5 mos. now. So far, I've found that one of the trees in the front has eaten a piece of nylon rope. Apparently someone tied a (yellow, of course) rope around that ole' white ash tree a LONG time ago and just left it there. The tree trunk got so wide that it just grew through the rope and it seems perfectly healthy. I've dug up several other pieces of this rope from the bed. The timbers in the front yard were staked into the ground with 12 rebar poles. The tree roots have encompassed 3 of them and they will NOT come out. I also found about 15 GIANT nails pounded into the ground in/around this bed and some daylilies under an overgrown bush. I found electrical wire that probably serviced one of those little pole lights in the front yard. That one scared me and I turned off the main circuit until I found both ends of it. In the back I found about 10 assorted large stepping stones, just discarded under a pile of trash. Other interesting things found while digging in the front bed: at least 20 assorted nails & screws, a tiny whiskey barrel magnet (which I really love for some reason,) a small plastic teddy bear, MUCH trash & wrappers, beer cans, a quarter, 2 pennies, several plastic bottle caps, construction debris, and a single tulip bulb. It's been a regular archaelogical experience and I had no idea the earth 'swallows' things up so fast! This house is only 22 yrs. old. I don't leave small object lying around at all anymore! LOL!

Two arrowheads that someone who shall remain nameless made off with. A septic tank (unused) that made a sink hole in the back yard, now filled with sand. Lots of roofing nails, found in flat tires.

Awwww, all I ever find are rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Not big cool rocks. Little annoying landscaping rocks, the kind people put in when they don't actually want a garden... those stupid lava rocks that are impossible to clean and reuse, not that I want to... I dumped about 15 bucketsfull in the dumpster when we were remodelling and I'm still finding them. What do they do, breed???

Holly

Ugh, I found a syringe w/ needle attached! And over time (before I moved in here) there's been so much glass shattered in my semi-concrete backyard that on bright days the whole lot glitters.

We have new (to us) property that I've found numerous beer bottles in every bush, bed, buried, etc. However, the most unique find was a tiny, beautiful, multicolored hash pipe in a mass of bromeliads. At first I thought it was an animal (the little hole was peering out at me like an eye. When I found it I didn't know what it was (I guess I was always a goody two shoes and led a fairly sheltered childhood) but thought it was beautiful and took it straight to my DH (who knew- a not so sheltered childhood). Anyway, I threw it out immediately at the bottom of the trash can (lest the neighbors think it was ours). One I couldn't possibly put on our Christmas tree!

What's with all the garbage? At least you are doing something about it. I have never found any garbage, as of yet. Best of luck to all of you and I hope all that garbage is taken care of.

The best thing we found was the original stoop to the farmhouse of the old farm where our house was built. It's a MASSIVE piece of flat stone with initials carved in it and a date 1921. Found it half buried in the woods. We layed it across two stumps and made the coolest bench.

Also found a dog (we hope) tombstone. It's carved marble. SOUPY 1974-1983.

And a pile of old glass telephone pole insulators.

Heineken caps. Lots and lots of Heineken caps. We've been in the house 4 years and every Spring I still pull up a fresh crop of them.

I just found a gold ring I lost last fall! (doing Happy dance!)

Last Spring a very handy 2-inch part of my rototiller handle unit (kind of a springy screw thing, for lack of a better description) loosened and fell into the soil that I was tilling with our Troybilt Bronco. I dug and looked for it a long time, but to no avail. I planted zucchini plants in that area. When I went to clean up the plants in the Fall, there it was, sitting on top of the soil.

Marilyn_C, a patio out of fossilized limestone -- wow! Wish we could find something like that!

All we ever find is an occasional plastic plant stick; the kind HDepot, Lowes etc, sell with their plants to let you know what you're planting. When we bought the house from two elderly sisters, the yard was totally overgrown and so full of weeds you couldn't even see the back fence! But one of them or maybe both, must have liked to garden because I kept finding these plastic sticks in two of the garden beds.

Last year we put in completely new garden beds, all around the house. I like to think that the previous owners would have been very pleased to see all the flowers blooming around a home that they loved so much.

Hello all.

At our old house we found every kind of trash imaginable. Lets just say the previous owners were less than desirable neighbors. The had put up fence wire using the trees as fence posts and kept hogs in the yard. (Yes this is in the country). It took several years to cut out the fence and kudzu vines from the trees and lilac & rose bushes around the perimeter of the property. The back yard, outside what would have been the kitchen window, was filled with trash and hundreds and hundreds of baby food jars and lids. They left everything in the house including a refrigerator with food and it hadnÂt been lived in, in over 3 years. (Yuck). Occasionally we would find a interesting thing or too in the creek bed like old dishes and such but nothing of great value.

How in the h*** did we come to live in that dump? Well the price was too good to pass up. Had to totally gut the house and start over but it was a good investment. We ended up tripling the size of the house & hand digging a basement under it in the 18 yrs we lived there. Did all of the work ourselves. And got every dime invested and more back when we sold it.

Funny story: My DH told me way back when we were dating that he wasnÂt going to propose until he had a house of his own to bring me too. Well...all he told me was that he knew of a place by his grandparents that he was probably going to buy and than he proposed. One week later he took me to see this ÂplaceÂ. I was stunned...All I could say was give me a match and I would be happy to burn it down. I couldnÂt believe that this man who professed to love me would expect me to live in that dump. I secretly cried for a week whenever I thought of the place. It quickly became a subject we didn't discuss. I couldnÂt face the thought of living there and didnÂt step foot on the place again until after we were married and it had been gutted and the rebuild had begun. Just goes to show what trust can build in a marriage. 27 yrs later we are still together and still trusting each other.

Now later when we bought the neighboring land from the guy next door we hit the mother lode. There was an old hog barn on it that was filled and I mean FILLED with old dishes and household goods from his late wife's family. They had been in that barn for over 30 years. He wouldn't take any of it back! We tried and tried to tell and show him it's value but he kept saying the only relative he had was a grandson in another state who wouldn't appreaciate any of it anyway and for us to keep it all and do what we wanted with it. We even bought antique and glassware pricing books and showed him pictures and prices but he wouldn't take any of it. I'm talking hundreds of piecse of depression glass, primitive ware, rusted piggy banks stuffed with buffalo head nickles, pottery, cut glass, and everything you can imagine that was in a house when the owner's had died back in the 1930's & 40's. His wife had inheirted about 3 old relatives things and they had just put them in this barn and forgot about it all. Took myself and my MIL over 8 hours washing dishes and we still weren't done. Ended up saving some, giving some to relatives who may have collected that type of article and sold most of it at an antique/flea market. That helped pay for the 1st room addition/remodel. A few years later when the old man died we gave the grandson his great-grandmothers silver baby spoon and cup that we had found. That was the only thing we could get the family to keep. I still feel a twinge of guilt now and than but think fondly of our old neighbor anytime I use the dishes I kept.

Where we built our new house in 1994 was at the top of hill in the middle of a field. There used to be an old coal mine here and we have found chunks of raw coal and a few old railroad spikes. Most definitely an improvement in IMHO. (oops, I really got off topic with this. Sorry it was so long.)
MaryK

Wow, MaryK, you really did hit the mother load of all time. The only things I ever found were some old canning jar tops, the zink and porcelain tops and some all glass tops and one arrowhead.

The previous owners of my house had ivy running wild, so I set about pulling it up. Underneath one patch, I found what looked to be a very large concrete stepping stone...kept pulling away more ivy until I realized it was a stepping stone in the shape of a GIANT concrete foot, with toes and everything. We're talking Sasquatch here. It made me laugh, but also kind of weirded me out, so now it's living underneath my deck where I can't see it. :o)

I have uncovered loads of cool stuff-- old bricks and tiles from a buried stairs and patio, small toys, old plant tags from long dead plants ... but one accoutramont has always troubled me: numerous tiny plastic bags discarded into the groundcover. Makes me wonder if a former inhabitant had a drug problem, which might explain why the house was so run down when we bought it. Not really pleasent things to find, since they make you think of the human misery that might have accomponied them.

Therefore, if anyone knows of a gardening use for intact one inch plastic bags, I would really love to hear it.

Springcherry

Well here's a twist. My husband's parents had a fishing cabin in the woods, the only to get to the cabin was to hike over a mountain or by boat. "No roads in them thar days" my husband parents are gone now, and my DH tells me of the days when his parents used to dig deep holes to dump non perishables. The cabin is our cottage now, so low and behold everytime I dig a new garden bed I don't find garbage, I find "memories". Old milk bottles, pop, beer bottles (called "stubbies" here), work boots, toys all kinds of goodies. Everytime I find something I run to show DH my new find, and he'll recount memories associated with my find. We are starting quite a collection! and devouting special shelf space in the kitchen for all his memories.

canoekid

Nothing but clay and tons of stone. My house was built on what was previously a cherry orchard. I envy ya'll who've dug up lotsa interesting things.

found = peace