Much nicer day than anyone expected today, so we visited some historic cemeteries. We're not serious gravestone people, but we appreciate the history and the beauty of the old local cemeteries and visit them from time to time.
A favourite is the Sears cemetery, which is basically an overgrown family plot in a very nice little conservation area. I grew up only a couple of miles away from it, and never knew it was there until I was a teenager. There's absolutely no indication from the road of its existence, so it's sort of a shock the first time you go there and discover gravestones 'round the corner. But it's a nice little spot in general, lots of trees, a brook and a littile lake, and a couple of swans that visit, although come to think of it, I'm not sure that's nice. Swans are mean.
Since we were in the region, we also visited the Dennis Town Hall Cemetery which I have to say was a bit disappointing. The age of the stones is interesting, but they're unfortunately very, very worn, and there's not that many of them. The whole region is sort of barren, there's no trees or interesting natural features, completely flat, and the grass is sort of sparse. The spousal unit nicknamed it the "blasted heath" and that's pretty much what it was.
Judging by the look of the place, we're pretty sure that there used to be a lot more stones in the Dennis Town Hall Cemetery that have worn down or been broken. There's a lot of spots where there's no longer a stone but people were obviously buried (low mounds in the ground in neat rows that look just like other low mounds that have a headstone and a footstore). I realize that sounds grisly, but it's impossible not to notice these things as you're walking through an old cemetery. Also, there's pieces of what clearly used to be headstones, but are now very worn down and almost indistinguishable from a piece of stone you might see in a stone wall.
I didn't mention this to the spousal unit when we went, but I was sort of on the alert for any "spooky feeling" in the Town Hall Cemetery. I'm pretty sure that's the spot one of the local Pagans mentioned being very creeped out by, they were convinced that the place is haunted. Mind you, the number of Pagans who run around claiming to feel "bad vibes" or that a place is haunted is ridiculous, but in my experience, some places do have an unpleasant atmosphere or are haunted, so I was keeping an open mind. I suspect in this case though, they were reacting to the dreary location and the sort of run-down quality the place has.
In other news, I purchased plants, including hostas and forsythia. The plan for the hostas is for them to grow up big and strong and fill in under the pine trees so that we can stop pretending we're ever going to be able to grow a lawn under there. The plan for the forsythia is for it to grow up big and strong and provide a little bit of privacy for us in the back yard. Plus, we're in Massachusetts, and I'm sure it's mandatory to have forsythia in your yard here, I'm surprised we haven't been cited or given a ticket or something for not having one.
The next plan is to buy something to fill in the back yard and provide a sound and visual buffer between ourselves and our back neighbors. We have a fence, but we want more. Our decks are sort of on the same level, and we're just sort of uncomfortably aware of each other when we're both on our back decks at the same time. Plus, we can see EVERYTHING that goes on at their house while eating dinner and looking out of our sliding glass doors. At times it's been quite entertaining, but we suspect that they may be thinking the same of us. Time to plant some shrubs.
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