New House Blog: Episode LXXII - Back Yard Bonanaza

And what a bonanza!  We have new plantings, swapped out plantings, and a major breakthrough in Back Yard Archaeology!!  And it all took place in the back yard, except for one find that was located on the side of the house that we use as the path to the back yard.  First up is new plantings.

New Plantings

We planted two new trees in back yard.  As with the other trees we have planted, these two are fruit trees.  We planted one apricot tree and one avocado tree.  But didn't we already have an avocado tree?  Yes, but it had some difficulties adjusting to its new home, and as a result it lost much of its height.  It seems to be doing much better now, but it much shorter and it will take it longer to produce any fruit.  Because of this, and the rumored need for both a "male" and a "female" avocado tree, I had been wanting to plant a second avocado tree for a little while.  The new avocado is a mexicola avocado tree, and we don't recall the variety of apricot tree, although it is possibly a Blenheim (I foolishly disposed of the information card before composing this blog posting).

 Here you can see the trees as they arrived at our New House in the back of Becky's truck.

 This is the new apricot tree, and its spacial relation to the food garden.

The new avocado tree is the further back avocado tree.  Here you can see the relative postions of the two avocados trees.





New Plantings Part II

We enjoy growing peppers - mainly several varieties of bell, but we sometimes experiment with other non-spicy peppers.  To our food garden we recently added six varieties of pepper.  In no particular order, here they are.

On the left is a purple bell, and on the right is a yellow bell.

This is our sweet red cherry pepper.

You can't quite read the tag, but it says that this is our sweet banana pepper.

 Red bell number one strikes a stunning pose.

Not to be left out is red bell number two.










Swapped Planting

Two of the bell peppers in our pottery garden did not fare well this season.  One was a plant from last year that survived the winter, and the other was a new plant that was sharing the same pot.  We replaced both plants with one new plant.  As a concession to my higher tolerance for spicy foods we agreed to plant a jalapeño pepper plant.  I find that jalapeños have a nice flavor and they are not overly spicy for my palette.

Look at that beautiful, healthy jalapeño pepper plant.


















Back Yard Archaeology

Before we talk about the major archaeological breakthrough we will take a quick look at a non-breakthrough artifact that was recently uncovered on the side of the house that we use as a path to the back yard.  It was partially sticking up out of the dirt along the fence, and I don't know why it was not noticed earlier.

 Here it is - a rusty metal flange of some sort.  The brick upon which it rests is 6 inches wide and 9 inches long.  As with other pre-Bishopian artifacts there are questions to ask.

Questions such as: what was this flange used for?  How old is it?  What did it hold together in the past?  Was there a time when it was not rusty?  How did the pre-Bishopians acquire the metal to fabricate this flange?  If we ever track down a pre-Bishopian we hope to ask him or her some of these questions.

Breakthrough!!

And now for the highlight of this episode - our Back Yard Archaeology Breakthrough!!  Our New House was built in 1971, and we have been assuming that all of the archaeological artifacts we have found to date have come from the pre-Bishopian society, but recently we uncovered major evidence of an older, pre pre-Bishopian society.  Yes, you read that correctly.  We now believe that the pre-Bishopians were preceded by another society that we are calling the Old Ones.  There is not much evidence, so far, for the Old Ones, but what evidence we do have is quite concrete.

What you see on the left is a monstrous concrete post foundation.  Note the ancient wood still intact in the center of this foundation.

Here is the same post foundation after extraction from the ground.  It is about 18 inches long, and its top was an inch or two below the ground.

Here you can see the thickness of the concrete and the interior wood post. All of the other post foundations found to date extended no more than about 6 inches into the ground - all but one.

This post foundation was uncovered and excavated in August, 2012, in this Episode.  Note its similarity of depth and roundness to the recently-unearthed post foundation above - the two are similar in size and construction.

As this was the first post foundation to be fully excavated, we didn't think anything of its size and depth: we simply considered it to be a mysterious pre-Bishopian post foundation.

But now, after finding the second such post foundation we have come to the conclusion that these two post foundations are different from all of the other post foundations, and they are different because they were made by a different, older society - the Old Ones.

Consider: these two post foundations were deeper in the ground, they were more uniformly circular, and they were formed from a higher-quality concrete than the other post foundations.

This is the hole from which the recently-unearthed foundation was unearthed.  Note its depth and roundness.  The Old Ones certainly knew what they were doing when they made this post foundation.  But why did they put it there?  What did it support all those many decades ago?  Why was their knowledge not passed on to the pre-Bishopians?  Were the pre-Bishopians even aware of the existence of the Old Ones?  Will we find more evidence of the Old Ones?  Will we ever stop finding things buried in our back yard?

Questions, more questions, and
   bIsh