When my wife and I moved into our current house in 1985, the garden was a mess. The previous owners had bought the house when it was built in 1936, and as they got older they did less and less gardening. By 1985 it was an overgrown jungle of weeds, and one of the first thing that we did was to have it cleared and a lawn laid down that covered most of the plot. The main exceptions to this were a number of young laurel bushes that were planted along the bottom boundary of the garden and a garden shed that was situated in one corner of the garden next to the laurel bushes.
When we had some building work done ten years ago I 'temporarily' moved some of my wargaming stuff into the shed, and other than the occasional sortie inside to find something, the shed has remained unopened ever since. Over the years the laurel bushes have grown ... and grown ... and grown! In fact they had grown so much that the shed had eventually disappeared from view ... until today.
Over the past week my wife and I have been doing some much needed gardening, including some drastic pruning of the laurel bushes. Thanks to the loan of heavy-duty garden shredder from my brother, we have managed to chop the pruned branches into a lot of very tiny pieces, which are currently awaiting disposal. I finally managed to open the shed door this morning ... and discovered that what I thought was a few crates full of stuff was actually twenty crates full.
A cursory glance inside the crates that were closest to door seemed to indicate that most of the contents were intact, if a little dirty. A proper sort out will have to wait until the rest of the garden is tidied up, a job that will probably take another week, weather permitting. As I have only the vaguest memories of what I put into the crates, investigating their contents could be a very interesting exercise.
When we had some building work done ten years ago I 'temporarily' moved some of my wargaming stuff into the shed, and other than the occasional sortie inside to find something, the shed has remained unopened ever since. Over the years the laurel bushes have grown ... and grown ... and grown! In fact they had grown so much that the shed had eventually disappeared from view ... until today.
Over the past week my wife and I have been doing some much needed gardening, including some drastic pruning of the laurel bushes. Thanks to the loan of heavy-duty garden shredder from my brother, we have managed to chop the pruned branches into a lot of very tiny pieces, which are currently awaiting disposal. I finally managed to open the shed door this morning ... and discovered that what I thought was a few crates full of stuff was actually twenty crates full.
A cursory glance inside the crates that were closest to door seemed to indicate that most of the contents were intact, if a little dirty. A proper sort out will have to wait until the rest of the garden is tidied up, a job that will probably take another week, weather permitting. As I have only the vaguest memories of what I put into the crates, investigating their contents could be a very interesting exercise.
...whereat you will find all sorts of stuff you wonder how you did without all this time....
ReplyDeleteHi Bob,
ReplyDeleteI have this mental image of you in full archaeologists attire doing something like this:
"Cordery made the "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway, and was able to peer in by the light of a candle and see that many of the gold and ebony treasures were still in place. He made the breach into the tomb with a chisel his grandmother had given him for his seventeenth birthday. He did not yet know at that point whether it was "a tomb or merely a cache", but he did see a promising sealed doorway between two sentinel statues. When Mrs Cordery asked "can you see anything?", Cordery replied with the famous words: "Yes, wonderful things."
I only hope it takes you rather less than the 10 years it took to clear the other famous tomb I have borrowed above!
All the best,
DC
Watch out for booby traps - I hear the place bears the Curse of the Wargamers Butterfly Inclination, which will strike any who disturbs its rest.
ReplyDeleteArchduke Piccolo,
ReplyDeleteThat is very true ... and very worrying!
All the best,
Bob
David Crook,
ReplyDeleteYou description was fairly accurate until you got to my wife's comments, which were more along the lines of 'What! More boxes of wargaming stuff! You already have a roomful and now you have a shed full!'.
In truth I have little idea what might be in the shed other than a box of plastic 20mm/HO-scale buildings and a crate full of unbuilt model kits. As to the rest ... who knows?
All the best,
Bob
Conrad Kinch,
ReplyDeleteI already feel that the weight of the curse upon me!
Last night I dreamt that I found loads of half-forgotten, half-finished projects that I felt impelled to finish!
All the best,
Bob
Raiders of the Lost shed?
ReplyDeleteI look forward to hearing what you come up with...
Tradgardmastare,
ReplyDeleteIf I find anything interesting, you can rest assured that I will blog about it!
All the best,
Bob
Does it say 'Pandora' above the door or 'Abandon Hope All Who Enter'?
ReplyDeleteI have quite a lot of stuff in the attic, in an old storage caravan and in my workshop shed. Knowing the kind of things I usualy find when I have a mooch I think thst you are going to be very busy in the near future :)
ReplyDeleteThe true mystery is how certain items migrated into the shed, although you didn't put them there and the door was sealed. It's much like the mystery of the missing sock mate. How did it become separated and come to lie behind the couch? What evil elf or other agency is responsible for such mayhem?
ReplyDeleteJim Duncan,
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the latter ... I leave anything to do with Pandora to my wife!
All the best,
Bob
Xaltotun of Python,
ReplyDeleteI suspect that you are right, and that I have an 'interesting' time ahead of me.
All the best,
Bob
CoastConFan,
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right! I expect that quite a few things are going to turn up in the shed that I thought were elsewhere ... and that I never, ever put there.
All the best,
Bob