Walking Wild Rose North Cemetery

As the grass turns greener and deciduous trees start to bud, I'm getting more and more excited about returning to the cemeteries. So excited in fact, that on Saturday with it's gorgeous weather and time in the afternoon upon returning from a meeting in the city, that I stopped in at the Wild Rose North Cemetery for my first ever visit.

It is a wonderful burial ground with a fantastically varied amount of markers: a tree stump, granite, marble, field stones, cement, bronze, fiberglass, and some sort of constructed stone that I will figure out! I found the fiberglass markers of great interest, because it is the first example I have come across of wolf stones being made of fiberglass instead of cement.

There was also unique modifications done to the "traditional" markers, such as the cross of a veteran's marker being filled in and a crucified Christ mounted in the area; a wolf stone had instead of a crushed glass or stone finish, the person's rock collection was pressed into the cement. I came across my first lamb sculptures and am looking forward to deciphering one upright pillar stone that is unique in that the west face is completely bare of lichen and the east face is just covered in it--and wouldn't you know, the east side is where the inscription is!

I didn't run into anyone there, but I know that individuals had visited within the last three days. How do I know it was three days? The offered roses were still doing well, but the most important clue--the sharply defined hoof prints in soft soil. We had snow Tuesday morning and rain throughout that day and more rain throughout Wednesday of this week, thus the visit could have only happened Thursday or maybe Friday (the roses I'm certain had been frosted over at least once already which is why I believe they weren't laid out that day).

So I'm quite excited to return soon to start transcribing the monument inscriptions and mapping the cemetery. Pictures will be a while yet--sorry I don't have any to share in this post!--as I want the grass to look mostly green before I get camera happy to record the markers.