Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Holiday Weekend, Part III

Last year for my husband's birthday, I got him a GPS unit. Shortly thereafter, we started geocaching. I can't say I get the same rush finding the cache tucked in somewhere, but it's worked well for us. He'll map out caches in rural cemeteries, and while he tracks down the treasure, I'll walk around looking at gravestones.


Sometimes, I take my camera with me. This used to bother him. If someone else was in the cemetery, he said it was disrespectful of me to be snapping photos of dead people who I don't know. I guess he's gotten over it because it doesn't seem to bother him as much.

We headed out Sunday afternoon to a few places. I forgot my camera, and being the dumbass that I am, I forgot that my new cell phone has a camera.

I remembered my digital camera on Monday, obviously.


I've no idea what this symbol is. Weeping Willow tree?

I'm always amazed when we stumble upon a well-kept, old cemetery. This wasn't the case, however. I didn't dare step too close to this for fear the ground would swallow me up.
There were several small headstones buried in this mass of raspberry vines and Tiger lilies.
I loved this tree. The geocache that my husband was searching for was tucked into the knothole.

I'd never seen anything like this tree, and there were two of them covered in these viney, root thingies.
I imagine the conversation went something like this.
"Hey Carl, what do I do with these pieces of field tile so I don't mess up my mower?"
"Just put 'em over yonder between those two headstones, Vern."
I would love to go back in the fall and see this Virginia Creeper in all its red glory.
I hope Sam doesn't mind being "creeped."
I wonder what happened to the fence that once attached to this great gate.

A lonely old-fashioned Columbine and some wild strawberries.
Wild mustard? I'm not sure what this yellow flower is that has been dominate in all the fields the last couple years. What remains of a fence row.
That stuff that grows on gravestones, except I was boggled by the color of it. This was a huge, newer cemetery. You could almost make hay, and apparently, weedwhacking wasn't a high priority for the holiday weekend. The smaller stones were almost hidden by the tall grass. It was disgraceful to see something like this in a cemetery that is still open for new arrivals.


Indiana this time of the year. I was snapping pics as we drove. Fields and woods, fields and woods. There's more than corn in IN - there's also John Deere tractors.










2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It could be a weeping willow to denote grief, or a Tree of Life. There are a lot of different ways to portray the Tree of Life, since its what is called a universal motif.

The tree that was all gnarled with vine looking stuff. It could be that it was diseased and it affected growth of the plant, though some folks would believe that was a sign of something called a black stream, which means the energy there {earth energies--if you believe in that sort of thing} are all wrong. One of the signs of that is really warped looking trees, esp in species that are normally not twisty, upright growers.

Oh, Pshaw said...

Thanks for the input. I've seen tree symbols before, but maybe because it was such an old marker, that's why it looked so unusual to me.

That's interesting about the warped tree. I've never seen anything like it, and both trees were next to each other and had the funky, gnarled look. I took a lot of pics of them, actually, because I had no idea what could cause it.