AGP - Surprises in a Cemetery

SURPRISES IN A CEMETERY

It had been raining and there was a lot of flooding around the area we were working, causing problems getting into the older cemeteries....so I began photographing in Lawrence Memorial Park Cemetery in Walnut Ridge, Lawrence County, Arkansas. It is a very large cemetery for that area...a few thousand graves.

It would rain some days catching me in the Cemetery....this one early morning, just a perfect day, when all seems right with the world..a quiet, peaceful and serene place...birds singning and sun shining, not hot and just about the best time of a new day...as I walked along a Robin would dart in and out and at one time flew towards and almost hit me...could not figure out his problem...the closer I came to the gravestone shown in the picture above, the more frantic he became....the stone still had on it's lovely christmas dressing. It was greeting the morning sun adorned in bright red and green.

Then it was time to walk over to the stone for the shot...about that time another Robin flew out of the middle of the red and green arrangement...I walked over to the stone and you can see what I found. The papa bird was trying to protect his mate while she tried to protect her not yet hatched babies. Pastel blue they were, her lovely eggs, a token of love between she and her mate.... so perfect, it seemed, they were almost not real....What a surprise in a cemetery.

From that day on, I would check the nest whenever close to the cemetery...All 4 eggs hatched...but it was soon time to leave to come back to Texas..so the fate of the 4 cemetery babies, delieved in the bough of a Christmas arrangement is unknown. I like to think that all 4 left the nest with garlands of Holly stuck in their wee little downy feathers, against a bright Robin red breast, as a synbol of new life going forth from a place of memories of those who have left us....Tootie

Hope you have found some "Surprises in a Cemetery" that you will share with us. Cemeteries are such wonderful places...most of the time.