Discoveries in the Backyard

On the weekend of February 18/19, while tending to some yard work, I noticed something buried in a stone retaining wall.  It looked odd, not like the other stones stacked to form the wall.  When I took it out, it fell in two, so perfectly that it must have been previously cut.  Regardless, it looked like wood... old rotten wood, but was as hard as a rock, literally.  I knew what I thought it was, but I waited for my wife, the biologist, to come home and verify my conclusions.  Upon her arrival, I anxiously brought her over to it and asked her to identify this specimen.  She said, "Is this... no..., yes, yes, this a petrified piece of wood?!"

We both stood there astonished.  This hunk of stone, I mean wood, sat hidden in the retaining wall for at least 100 years, becoming, well, a hunk of stone (according to Wikipedia.com, wood takes a minimum of 100 years to become petrified).  Due to the clean cut, my suspicion is more that a previous owner had it on display in the garden, forgot about it where it was lost to time until, in my boredom, I dug it out of the wall.

Either way, my home is just awesome!  I find things in the backyard that are just amazing!