In this post on some of the junk we've found in the yard I guessed that the item on the right below:
might have been an old school TV antenna. A few days later on her fantastic blog, A Study in Contrasts, Kim wrote about Urban Excavating in her yard. I left her a comment and a link to my tale of urban junk and she left me the following response:
Okay, after leaving a comment on my own blog (after reading your comment and this link) I had to go online and search to see whether or not I was crazy, thinking your "antenna" might be a rake. Check this out:
http://www.photos.com/en/search/close-up?oid=4089222&hoid=f50832d34afd63e624b0e7902819c031
Maybe I'm not crazy! (Or at least, not in regards to this. lol.)
I immediately asked VPH if he could pull the TV antenna-like object out of the trash barrel in back of the shed the next time he was out there composting. "You mean the old wooden rake?" he responded. Guess who's not reading my blog.
So, Kim, you were absolutely right (and I don't think you're any crazier than the rest of us), it is an old wooden rake complete with one whole tine still attached:
I don't see any way to use this neat old tool in my garden that wouldn't seem like I was littering my yard with broken crap.
Any ideas?
Heather: LOL at that post! That was a grading rake and I had one but the pegs break and then you are left with...garbage as they are hard to replace so you go out and buy one of those mega aluminum grading rakes and they weigh 100 lbs and your arms get tired using them and so on and so on and so on. I have never found anything on this previously wooded lot except stone walls. Maybe there is an arrowhead or two buried somewhere but I have yet to find one!
Posted by: layanee | October 02, 2007 at 07:36 PM
I have no idea what you would do with that old rake. Maybe if you hosed off, cleaned it up a bit, you'll come up with something. Maybe stick it in a container to use as a trellis for a small vine?
Carol at May Dreams Gardens
Posted by: Carol | October 03, 2007 at 06:09 PM
Layanee -- that's what VPH and the strong step-sons are for -- the heavy duty upper body strength required jobs! It's actually pretty creepy to keep finding these things. Who were the people who lived here who decided, oh this spot looks like a good place to throw all our trash. VPH is convinced that he's going to find a body one of these days.
Carol -- I had the same thought, I'll have to experiment in the spring, but I still think it will just look like I stuck a broken rake in a pot.
Posted by: Heather's Garden | October 03, 2007 at 11:30 PM