29 April 2011

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

We had perfect weather for Friday's workday. After the driving rain last month, it was a relief to work under sunny skies. Eleven sturdy volunteers participated, removing winter debris, pulling out invasive weeds and tree sprouts, and working on path maintenance. Regional Parks provided the much appreciated tool trailer and dump truck. This month we also located another piece belonging to one of our stones.

By happy coincidence, while I was at the cemetery earlier in April, I came across Che Casul, a Robertson / Parmeter descendant who was visiting the cemetery. His mother still lives on the original Robertson Ranch opposite Watson School (Spring Hill's W. R. Robertson helped to found and build the historic one-room Watson School in 1856). In talking with Che, he mentioned that the top of W. R. Robertson's headstone is in his mother's basement. Apparently it had broken off many years ago, and his mother brought it home for safe keeping until they could figure out how to reattach it. Che was planning to join us on Friday's workday, but didn't make it. As soon as we see the missing piece, we will figure out just how to reunite it with the rest of the stone. Piece by piece our wandering stones are returning to us - Nettie Stump from Pacheco, Catherine Small and James Erb from Sebastopol Memorial Lawn, Leni Ogan from San Francisco, and now the top piece of W. R. Robertson's stone from a descendant's basement.

Our primary task of the day was removal of winter debris. Although we gathered a dump truck full of debris last month, the late March storms replenished the material to be removed. The first two pictures show us gathering the downed tree branches and eucalyptus bark and filling the truck. Although Spring Hill's trees constantly rain down debris, the bulk of it comes during winter storms - and, unless a late storm springs up, that has now been cleared.

Winter storms also cause havoc to our paths. Spring Hill's paths have always been log lined. Over the years many of these logs have rotted away, making the paths difficult to see. We are replacing rotted out sections with redwood logs (many thanks, Sally and Dick!), hoping that the redwood will hold up and be more resistant to rotting. Besides replacing rotted sections of the path liners, we cleared the paths of debris. The third picture shows our newest and youngest recruit, 3 1/2 year old Gabriel, in action raking the paths around the Zilhart enclosure.

There is more than the usual spring growth at the cemetery this year, a result of the abundant winter rainfall. Much of it is charming, with many more forget-me-nots, miner's lettuce, and calla lilies than we have had in past years, to go along with our ever present blue-flowered vinca minor. Along with the flowering plants that we usually leave alone unless they encroach on paths or obscure monuments, the cemetery has much dandelion, thistle, blackberry, ivy, invasive grasses, broom, and acacia that the volunteers pulled mercilessly on Friday. Unfortunately, we also found much more poison oak sprouting than is usual for this time of year, particularly on the north and west areas of the cemetery. I have forwarded the poison oak problem to Regional Parks, who will hopefully be able to correct the situation prior to June's workday.

Please note: there is no workday scheduled in May. The next workday will be June 17th - please mark your calendars, and come join us if you can.

Best Regards,

Sue

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