Dear Readers, after arriving back in London we felt the need for a nice peaceful walk, and nowhere suits that brief better than a cemetery, particularly the one in East Finchley, which always seems  much quieter than St. Pancras and Islington. As mentioned before, it’s a much more well-manicured site, but there is always something interesting to see, especially as there are some fine specimen trees.

I’ve always had a great fondness for spindle, with its exotic-looking pink berries. If I didn’t know it was native I’d think it was an ornamental from the tropics.

We wander down to the memorial garden, where the Japanese acers form such a wonderful contrast to the lawns.

I have a great fondness for this weeping willow tree too.

There is a small woodland  burial plot, where the cyclamen are coming into flower and the geranium ‘Rozanne’ is still going. What great value this plant is!

In the War Graves section of the cemetery, someone has planted several varieties of aster, a great autumn plant even on a grey and miserable day. Something about those daisy flowers always cheers me up!

I liked seeing this statue from behind the hedge.

And here’s the view back towards the Italianate crematorium.

There’s a reminder of my husband’s home in Toronto in this blue spruce, with its furry cones.

And you might remember this bed of rudbeckia and salvia that I photographed on my last visit. It’s going over now, but there’s still something splendid about the sheer mass of flowers.

And then it’s time to head home, though there were one or two surprises left. One was the ferns making their way up this drainpipe – I always find it interesting how a microhabitat like this supports species that aren’t seen anywhere else close by. How many spores and seeds are lost because they don’t find a place that’s damp enough or sunny enough for them to thrive, I wonder? This is Maidenhair Spleenwort, last seen when I was down in Somerset.

And finally, there’s something rather odd about the flowers on this Greater Celandine.

It appears to be double-flowered, even though it’s growing as a ‘weed’ in front of some housing in East Finchley. There is a garden variety of this plant called ‘Flore Plenum’, so I’m assuming that this plant has ‘hopped over the fence’, but I was surprised to see it growing in such profusion. I’m assuming that it will revert to type over time, but I will keep an eye on it to see what happens. In theory, double-flowered blooms are much less appealing to pollinators because of the increased difficulty in accessing the nectar and/or pollen, so let’s see.