One of our local routes takes us through a barley field. The weather's always been still since we found this path, but this evening the wind was sending great waves of silver across the green. Usually we hear what we think are larks but tonight it was just the wind in our ears./

There's a lot of old bits of pot in the soil - probably a few middens have been ploughed in the C19th. On one of these there's just a trace of willow pattern visible. The last person to have touched this might have been a slightly annoyed person c1850 who'd just dropped a pot/

It doesn't look much, but this route runs from a medieval tower house to a long-established farm. It's likely to be a very old route, pretty much off the beaten track for a long time, but - like many such tracks recently - becoming more beaten again.

We also picked up 3/4 of an inch of old clay pipe, which could have been dropped round there or ploughed in anytime before around 1900.

Hawthorns/may trees still flowering, but just starting to go brown at the edges. Mum was remembering this week being told off ferociously as a child by her grandmother for bringing a branch of may into the house. *Very bad luck* apparently - so don't./

This was around 1940. My (maternal) great grandmother was born in rural Nottinghamshire, I think around 1870. It's possible it's only bad luck in the East Midlands.

Nope - bad luck everywhere. "no flower is considered more unlucky. To take hawthorn blossom into a house was thought to invite illness and death. Children were forbidden to bring it home." https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008lx6k

This is a lovely site. https://www.plant-lore.com/hawthorn/