22 February 2013

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

Nine of us gathered at the cemetery today for our first 2013 workday. We were delighted to welcome hard-working Oregonian Jerry Meyer to our work crew. His wife is a Titus descendant, and Jerry Lites brought him along and put him to work. Our focus was on restoring order to the cemetery following the winter storms. Regional Parks supplied us with a well stocked tool trailer and large dump truck, the sun was shining on us, and it was a wonderfully productive day.

It was a pleasure to arrive at the cemetery and find it in reasonably good condition. As has been the case for some time now, we found no trash littering the cemetery, and no signs of the cemetery being used for parties or other harmful activities (for the first few years of our restoration efforts, we would gather an entire trash bag full of abandoned empty liquor bottles each workday, and frequently we would find evidence of parties, or bonfires having been set in the cemetery). Our monuments all stood up well to winter this year. No stones were damaged. There are a few dead trees that we will monitor. Other than that, the cemetery is its usual, serene self.

For those of you not local to Sebastopol, the end of 2012 was very wet, but so far 2013 has been unusually dry. This led to a dry cemetery floor and good working conditions. There was an unusual abundance of fallen leaves and broken branches littering the ground this year. With so much debris, our dump truck was quickly filled to overflowing. We worked until we couldn't squeeze another leaf into the dump truck. We were able to rake most of the paths and gather the bulk of the fallen branches before the dump truck filled and we had to stop.

I have attached a few pictures from today. The first two show Arletta McIsaac's newly installed headstone. She is located just in front of her husband, William J Robertson's stone. She died in 2012 and her burial spot was prepared at the end of last year, although I am not sure if her cremated remains have been transferred to the cemetery yet or not. The the third picture shows Sally and Rae energetically hauling collected debris to the dump truck. Next is a shot of the leaves and limbs littering the ground (before they were cleaned up!). The fifth shot is of the two Jerry's cleverly filling every inch of the dump truck. The sixth shows our hardworking group at the end of our labors. Lastly is a picture of one of the Luther Burbank developed narcissus in bloom - several of them are showing their colors throughout the cemetery. Many thanks to the Martins for sharing this floral treasure with us.

With the cemetery in good shape, we will forgo the March 15th workday. Our next workday will be April 12th. Future 2013 dates are:

April 12

June 21

August 2

October 4

and November 22.

Please come join us when you can!

Best Regards,

Sue

Attachment #1
William J. Robertson's &
Arletta Robertson's McIsaac stones

Attachment #2
Arletta McIsaac's Stone

Attachment #3
Clearing paths

Attachment #4
Debris on forest floor

Attachment #5
Filling truck

Attachment #6
Group

Attachment #7
Luther Burbank narcissus