what lies beneath

There’s digging happening in our back neighbour’s yard. Not small digging with hands or a shovel. Big digging. With a big digger and several dudes in hard hats and yellow vests.

Digger. When my kids were young, they would have been entranced, and would have spent the entire day outside watching the goings on.

They’ve dug down several feet so far, pulling out layers of soil and roots. Near our fence, they felled an impossibly large old maple, a tree that shed branches with every storm and creaked ominously whenever there was wind. And then they started work on excavating its roots. In my little garden studio, I could hear them shouting encouragement and then, when it finally came loose, cheers.

My busy-ness was quiet. I was at my computer, zooming in and out of photos of a wedding dress made in 1838. Cataloguing the buttons, the cording, the tassels, the stitches. I lost myself down a rabbithole following the development of the sewing machine, and then I went hunting for information about mourning periods. I searched out other wedding dresses from the same era, and then I read about weddings. I looked at the family tree I’d constructed, considered relationships. I drew arrows and circles. I reached out for help and then I read and zoomed. In and out. In and out. So many threads. So many questions.

Not the dress I've been looking at. But similar era. Evening dress, British, 1840-45. Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. 

By last night, there was a long trench along the back of the garden.

And today we’re all back at it.

Digging. Sifting.

And then digging some more.