Hedge Findings

We spent the afternoon filling gaps in the hedge.  The garden is bordered by old hedges, some holly, some hazel, some nondescript so we will wait and see.  We bought some bare-root hedge stock yesterday, a mixture of beech, field maple, hazel, dog rose and spindle.  This afternoon we cleared the dead leaves and stones from beneath the fence and dug a trench to plant them, about a foot apart.  We found fragments of roof tile (the house was once roofed with stone tiles) and some larger wall-stones.  We also found lots of washed-out pale blue pottery shards, as well as the more-usual willow pattern.  And a small, perfectly preserved, brass gas-lamp attachment, like a pipe designed by Jules Verne, presumably thrown out when the cottage was converted to electricity perhaps in the 1940s.