Look at that sad little face….
I love the way that each grave is its own microhabitat. Some (presumably the damper ones) are full of buttercups.
Others are full of daisies and herb robert.
A great tit sang its tiny head off from the top of a tree…
And the grave below appears to be to be doing all kinds of peculiar things with its angles. I was very intrigued by the name of the man buried there – Guy Turing Bruce. I wondered if he was any relative of Alan Turing, the famous Bletchley code-breaker? I must do some more research.
Up we go to the rose garden. There are some rather lovely white versions of the usual bellflowers – whether these are a natural mutation or a new variety I have no idea. I always find it entertaining to see these plants being sold in garden centres, when around here in North London all you need is a bare wall, or a shady spot between a fence and a path, and you’ll get hundreds of ‘Port and Posch’ for free.
Here is the usual purple version, growing a few metres away.
One of my favourite spots in the cemetery is a wild garden called The Spinney – it has silver birch and a whole variety of woodland wildflowers. If I end up in this cemetery, I’d like to find a resting place here, though I would have to be cremated rather than buried. And preferably dead in either case.
Pink hogweed
Ribwort plantain
Herb robert (again)
I spot a jay, but s/he isn’t very cooperative. You can see her zooming off like Superman just above the right of the centre gravestone, if you squint.
The crematorium itself has its usual sign on the ash-tray, though I could see no signs of habitation…
And I love the way that the crematorium building is standing magnificently against the stormy North London sky. It should come as no surprise that it was designed by the same people who built the Golders Green Crematorium, another Italianate edifice.
No cemetery is complete without an interloping cat. This one sat making ‘blinky-eyes’ at me from a safe distance.
And on the way home, I had to pop in to see the Chitalpa trees (Desert Willows) of Church Lane. You might remember that these five street trees had been planted and given the names of various local people. I can report that all of them are looking great, and that all apart from one still have their name tags. I am keeping my fingers crossed that one of these days I’ll actually catch them in flower.
Now, at the very bottom of Church Lane is an area of derelict land – this used to be a petrol station, but has lain neglected and unused for about ten years in my estimation. Unused, that is, by people. However, it is gradually being colonised by plants, which are bursting through the concrete in a most satisfactory fashion. To begin with it was largely buddleia, but there’s a much greater collection of plants now.
There’s lots of red valerian. There are both the red and the pink varieties, and I think they look rather splendid against the graffiti on the back wall.
There are those early colonisers sycamore…
..and birch…
and some prickly lettuce…
No doubt at some point all this land-banking will stop, but in the meantime it’s quite the thing to track all these different plants taking advantage of the habitat. I love the way that plants will move into even the most polluted and difficult areas and make them their own.
I have enjoyed this meander with you. It is wonderful to know the cemeteries in your area are well looked after when ours have tended to be horribly vandalised over the past number of years. I too smile at indigenous plants for sale in other parts of the country that I battle to keep at bay in my own garden. It all depends on where the plants feel most at home. The re-colonisation of the derelict land is interesting to see too.
It really is a lovely cemetery. I’m glad I had an opportunity to visit it last year, although we apparently did not rate a cat visit! What a pretty cat she or he is, too.