Ghosts of soldiers past

This general area where we live has seen lots of history.  There were Civil War battles near here plus Indian encampments.  So it may not be all that surprising that my oldest grand daughter Bri has seen ghosts.  So far none in the house but plenty outside.  Sometimes they are marching, sometimes guarding, she has even heard them talking.  I don't know how I should feel about Civil War ghosts guarding my yard, I guess I should feel honored! We tried to take a metal detector around and look for artifacts but were unsuccessful.  Of course this is a huge yard and we could have missed plenty.  The only thing we did find with the detector was very old examples of barbed wire. One interesting item I found while just digging around in the yard was an ancient empty tortoise shell! At first I only saw a piece of it sticking up out of the ground and thought it was an old football helmet. Boy, was I shocked when I dug out the rest of it!  This old tortoise could have been food for someone, there are holes in the top so I am thinking he didn't die from old age. Was he lunch for Indians, soldiers or a large predator?

Empty partially fossilized tortoise shell

 Besides soldiers this land may have had Indians on it because we have what I believe is a trail tree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_trees  We have one tree that is completely horizontal with three trees growing straight up from it! The Indians would manipulate trees into various shapes to be used as trail markers. There are a few other weird trees but none as strange as this one. 

trail tree

 We did show it to a woman from The Florida Forestry Division and she didn't think it was that old.  Looks pretty old to me, but what do I know?  She did point out though that we had one of the worst invasive species of plant that you could possible have! Gee, thanks a lot. It is called Cogan Grass. And while it looks lush, green and healthy it is brutal and can kill all neighboring plants while being delightfully hard to kill!  Think diesel fuel and a blow torch and you may be able to control it! It was brought over by farmers for their cattle, mistakenly thinking they'd gobble it up.  They should have asked the cattle first, because they hate the stuff and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole! I'm pretty sure nothing eats it.  Jim has been killing it slowly and methodically and it seems to be working.  We thought it was pretty, had no idea it was a nuisance.

Invasive Cogan grass

 Instead of playing spot the license plate we now play spot the Cogan grass while we are out driving. I wonder if those people know what a dangerous invasive they have in their yard?