In the depths of winter, I curtail my hunting a bit. The ground in my garden gets too hard to dig, especially for a man with my old bones. For when I can't stop the urge, my root cellar will do, but I must be selective in my prey - fitting new additions into my ossuary can be quite the puzzle!

But I am religious about taking my walks. And often I take them near the school on the hill, keeping an eye out for my little flower, and wondering what's become of her. I haven't seen her, but I can see her handiwork on the school grounds. She has a way with plants, and I'm quite sure that such species as the Creeping Sentient Euonymus, the Sighted Quince, the Slow-Moaning Winterberry, the Maddened Corkscrew Hazel, Enchanted Hellebore, Vatic Snowdrops, and the Floating Camellias are all there due to her gifted hands.

And in the midst of all her beauty, all her gardening wonder, what do I see but some young oaf digging holes in it all! @Dunder Dinstein I heard him called by one of his chums. What kind of vandals are these young people? The horror! No appreciation for the wonders of a beautiful garden.

I am considering creating some space in my root cellar.

My little flower has not returned...

I'd been eyeing her for a few weeks at the garden supply store. Really quite impossible to ignore, if you have a sense for these things, and I certainly do! I realized immediately she must be a student at the school on the hill, and with a passion for the earth no less, so she was really quite perfect for my needs. And her name is @Maryann Tulip. What could be more appropriate?

But a delicate operation, most certainly. To invite someone like that into my garden - my very special garden - and still maintain the level of... privacy... that a man like me is accustomed to, required finesse. And I am not a man without my own unique means...

It was easy enough to entice her to visit. But the trick was getting her to use her skills to help me understand the size and nature of the Very Large Object I have discovered underneath my grounds, without her being distracted by the wide range of other, shall we call them "artifacts" also buried around my garden. And buried quite thick, I'm afraid.

It turns out my little flower has a very interesting skill - the tiniest of roots... no, roots is too coarse a word, they are the thinnest of tendrils - hairs! Antennae! Strong, like wires, but so thin and delicate - that spring from the tips of her fingers and bury themselves in the earth, racing with joy like dogs on the hunt, unspooling endlessly from her fingertips and burrowing, swimming into the earth!

Truly, it was breathtaking. And the look on her face - a radiant angel! - as she guides the filaments through the earth and you can see she feels it throughout her young frame... seeing what they see through feeling it. No doubt it's not only a bit of sonar but tasting alkaline levels, moisture, minerals - the rush of swimming through the very earth, while she stands upon the surface, feeling it all through her wires...

But quickly, before I lost myself in her trembling, quivering, quaking rapture, I used my own inborn gifts and gently maneuvered her mind away from the things I could not allow her to see. And there were certainly a lot of them! I will say it was a very unique experience working with the mind of my little flower. So much information, just shooting up through those tiny fibers and into her unconventional nervous system. However, my usual techniques provided their usual effectiveness, and I merely nipped the unwanted memories in the bud, before they could fully lodge in her delicate brain.

For all my years working in this garden, all my plots dug and secret little presents planted, I assumed I knew everything about this piece of land - every snag and bush on the surface, and even most every rock and root beneath....

So you can color me quite surprised regarding my latest discovery! Granted, the tip of it lay in the depths of a particularly ancient overgrown copse of bramble that I'd never had need to clear out before, but my little night hunts have been busy and so space is at a premium these days.

Ripping out the spiny bramble and shoveling out the rotted mulch, my hoe clanged what first seemed like an old iron kettle, but as I dug at and around it seemed much larger - an old iron wood stove perhaps... but no, it goes much larger and deeper than that. I'm afraid it's not really possible to dig up - not without excavating the whole of my grounds, and digging a rather enormous hole...

I believe I'll need to enlist the help of a specialist.

For instance, just this morning I unearthed the skeleton of a tiny monkey - in rusty plate armor - still tied to his mount, which appears to be an Australian sheep dog, if my canine anatomy still serves. I must have surprised him mightily - perhaps in one of the various "tiger traps" I was so fond of once upon a time - in order to have buried them both alive simultaneously like this...

I love puttering about in my garden, and sometimes I find the strangest bones! I mean, I've lived here in my present abode for over 150 years, so there's really no one else to blame. Just my fading memory... So many memories....