I’m writing this in the erstwhile billiards room, mulling over my favorite tunnel find, the little cast-iron horse, frozen in flight beside me. My discoveries have changed the way I think about where I live. We buy a house believing it’s ours, but in fact it’s an ever-shifting palimpsest and we are merely the latest to write over it.

Nevertheless, for continuity’s sake, my housemates and I have kept to the tradition of holding big parties. It’s practically a civic duty. It would be selfish to keep all this house and yard to ourselves.

As befits a home built in an old farming district, we also have made a point of working the land, gradually putting the yard back into operation over the years. We removed 12 tons of concrete there, covered the devastated soil with free city compost and planted an organic garden that produces so many vegetables we’ve considered opening a farm stand.

We planted a fig tree and several berry bushes, and we bought a wine press to accommodate the fruits of the prolific grapevine. (As a concession to our retrograde American attachments, we put down a lawn just big enough for bocce but a touch too small for a cow.)

The garden is a particularly busy place now that spring is here. We’ve set up a coop in preparation for the chickens we have on order. We bought more than 50 varieties of seeds, many of them heirlooms that haven’t been in wide use since the house was built. And we’re stocking up on canning and pickling jars  the tunnel will make an excellent root cellar.

Among the stranger produce we’ve harvested from the garden is a doll we call Pinkie, who, with the hole in her stomach and her grossly misshapen head, was probably scary even before she was buried decades ago. Pinkie has become the house mascot. She sits on the front-porch swing, which is somehow always rocking, and keeps a constant vigil, staring into the middle distance through her one good eye.