Not quite archaeologists.

It's surprising what pops up when you leave your backyard unattended for months.

I was lucky enough to snap a few pictures of this wildlife before our own native wildlife lunged out of the underbrush to swat at my dangling camera strap. After showing that strap who's queen of this jungle Zoe-Cat turned and took care of the invading fungi with a few bats of her paw. Trampled a pretty little fairy ring too.

Oh well, time was running out for them anyway, being right in the middle of our future patio.

We decided that since we had to remove 6" of soil from the perimeter of the house we may as well take it a little farther and prep the ground for forming a concrete patio.
Sure will be an improvement over our existing plywood "patio". This was taken after the big clean-up or, to be exact, re-location of the mess to the other side of the yard.
Here:
After a fair bit of consultation we decided on a curved patio, mimicking the curve of the eyebrow window above. Wouldn't do to take the easy way & make it square, would it? You can see the stakes showing where it'll go in the photo above. It'll be pretty big. Click on the pic to see just how excited our teenage helper was to be spending part of his weekend doing heavy-duty yardwork.

Then there was digging....

digging....

and more digging.

And this was not the easy sand that was removed from the side yards. This was the lovely soil we have for gardening - hard-packed clay. Good riddance.

Among the less interesting finds unearthed like pink bricks from the former house, large chunks of concrete and various construction debris was also a pink road cone and this guy: