Monuments and Memories at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. With Gratuitous Cats.

There was a bunneh holding a sunflower balloon when I got to Hodge's house on my birthday morning.  That night, there was Grandma Cree's lemon pound cake, swimming in lemon sauce and so, so delicious, to share with Hodge, husband John, Corey and Phoebe. How wonderful was that?

I have more images from Mount Auburn Cemetery, which is so rife with wonderful things to look at that I could probably blog from there for two years straight without running out of material. Add in the change of seasons, weather and light, and I could blog it for a lifetime.

I met bluestone on my birthday. A trip to Wikipedia leaves me confused as to whether this might be Pennsylvania or Shenandoah Valley bluestone; whether it's feldspathic sandstone (PA) or feldspathic greywacke (VA). Or neither. Dunno. The Webz being what they are, somebody might flutter in on little cupid's wings to tell me. Rocks. I love 'em, but I don't know 'em.

Look at what they can carve from this stuff, though. We found a family with fabulous bluestone tablets, marvelously hard and fine for detail.

I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking the family name of Beebe might have something to do with the hive and its inhabitants carved hereon...Maybe they called Edward "Bee" in good New England fashion.

Loving the stylized wings that promise to lift these children (or their heads, anyway) into heaven. 

I'm not sure what's going on here, but we really dug this one, a sort of disgruntled face with a surprise turkeytail of feathers around it. If I had to guess I'd say it was an attempt at a likeness of the deceased.

This is a particularly lovely stone. I really love the botanicals on so many Mt. Auburn stones. 

Speaking of lovely botanicals, a sea change is occurring at Mount Auburn as management is emphasizing the use of native plants to beautify and attract pollinators. It's working!

The mound on which the viewing tower stands used to be landscaped, if I remember, in grass and shrubbery. Now, a native plant garden is springing to life!

I couldn't have been more thrilled to see these plantings, with tiger and spicebush swallowtails and silver-spotted skippers flitting through.

Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) are the big splashes of color. The butterflies were so happy. Butterflies in a cemetery lift the heart. Good going, MAC.

American goldfinches appreciate the seeds in all these coneflower heads, and they'll check out the bergamot come its time, too. A Baltimore oriole tootled overhead, red-eyed vireos sang; house wrens darted behind stones. It was divine to see what had been a non-descript hillside spring to life with unbridled meadows of native plants that belong and prosper here.

We climbed the tower for a breathtaking view of beautiful Boston. 

The light had a shimmery, surreal quality that made me feel as if the sky were putting on a show just for us.

Near Willow Pond, half-hidden beneath massive dawn redwoods (Metasequoia), Hodge showed us a gigantic boulder, cloven in half, that she'd never noticed before. It was the perfect compliment to the biologically ancient trees overhead. Corey swiped Phoebe's phone to shoot her portrait against the rock.

We grooved on some exotic hydrangeas on the way down to Willow Pond.

Since Phoebe's been working with Caroline Waller of Passiflora Studio, her already keen appreciation of flowers has expanded. She's helped Caroline pull off several weddings this summer, and learned volumes about floral husbandry, arranging, work and life. 

She now knows how to make these!

hence her enchantment with exquisite oakleaf hydrangeas such as inhabit Mount Auburn. She was itching to make bouquets! but of course restrained herself.

Watching the birdwatcher watching turtles at Willow Pond.

35 years ago, I found many life birds at Willow Pond. Vireos love weeping willows, and that's where I'd find them--white-eyed, yellow-throated, red-eyed, warbling--even Philadelphia sometimes!

To be there with my daughter and her love, well, that was a full-circle moment, one that filled my heart.

The paths beckoned us onward. 

We found more putti. I especially loved the artistry in these. Gorgeous faces, and pretty darn good wings, too, if you don't get too Science Chimpy about the two sets of secondaries or the overlap of the underwing coverts. Let's just say they're better than the bluestone wings.

Oh, the Easter lilies, singing of spirits rising again! One of my very favorite stones, natural and pleasingly asymmetrical, like nature herself.

Any trip to Mount Auburn would be incomplete without noting some of the weirdness that weather and acid rain wreaks. I'm always a bit creeped out by the sleeping children, but when they melt...

A cradle full of groundcover.

There is a dorm called Wigglesworth at Harvard. 

More weather-related alchemy... I'm pretty sure this little fella was not scowling when first installed. Hey! Where did my dadburn hands go??

We have lots of fairly irreverent fun at Mount Auburn, but we try to keep our chortling muffled.

Corey takes a dip at towertop.

Truly, one of the best birthdays ever. All right. I'm done celebrating, but I'll never be done reminiscing about time spent with people I love in a place I love too.

Gratuitous cat photos from Java Macomber

What? I wasn't just slouching unattractively.

Yes you were.

and her more decorous sister Star

who takes up a kitchen stool in a most delightful way.

These two are da bombs. I get a huge kick out of watching them interact with each other and totally manipulate Hodge and John into doing their every bidding, which revolves around (at last count) four metered daily feedings. Lots of very soft, pitiful coughy mewing and give-me-kibble-staredowns, all day long.

You forgot to top me off after the morning feeding.

Stone Dog, Birthday Owl

I have so many favorite things at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, but I have to put the stone dogs at the top of my list. 

I couldn't remember having seen this fantastic monument, this faithful marble fella. Hodge said, "You've seen this one!" but I'm not sure I had. My memory is becoming such that I'm having delightful new experiences all the time. It's much more fun not to remember that kind of stuff. Then it's all new again!

Hey puppy, why the long face? Why the stony look?

Well, I miss my master and I have a feeling he's not coming back. But I've kept watch here for oh, 70 years, and I'll be watching another 200 or so.

Your strong marble paws, so eloquent. And there's a random lion's foot behind them, too.

On the side of the monument, Dad's coming home from a trip. Mom's been holding down the fort. Maybe he's bringing a little sled full of toys. Baby looks kind of like he was copied from a Renaissance painting of Christ, like a miniaturized person. Head's too small in relation to the body. The toddler is better proportioned. Daddy! Daddy! Did you bring me toys?

And on the other side, the grieving widow is receiving his ashes, Hodge speculates. Too soon he left them, aged 31. Even the mastiff outlived him. The turquoise blue bleeding off the bronze (or copper?) frames is so beautiful. Like the colors you see shooting through icebergs. 

For a story about this monument that was not a product of my fevered imagination, please see

 this link, kindly supplied by Jessica Bussman of Friends of Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Turns out it's kind of a monument to express package delivery. Probably not ashes. :)

Spectacular hydrangeas. I love the hydrangeas here.

Phoebs finds a person with her exact birthday! That's some little monument, like a birdhouse for a spirit. A spirit-cote.

We walk on to The Dell, where Hodge rarely fails to find a great horned owl. We hear titmice scolding and scolding, and know there must be one near. But we can't find it. Three of the best sets of eyes I know, then mine. I'm of little help here. Finally Hodge says, "Oh! There he is!"

He is?? Wha wha wha?? Where?

He IS!!

Hodge finds so many owls on her peregrinations around Fresh Pond and Mt. Auburn that she doesn't really get how rare it is for we mere mortals to see any owl at all. She seemed surprised by our reaction. 

"You guys are birders. I figure you see them all the time. Don't you?" Um, no. No no no. We birders still freak out on the vanishingly rare occasions that we see an owl. You, my dear, are remarkable.

***Follow Hodge on Instagram @khmacomber***

I am traveling light; I didn't bring my big rig. I snap these pitiful photos of a pine tree with an indistinct growth in its armpit. They're the best I can do. The iPhone 6 camera is a miracle of engineering and capability, but it is not a camera for distant wildlife.

As I'm cussing and fussing, Corey grabs Phoebe's iPhone, and using his knee as a stabilizer, holds it up to one eyepiece of his BINOCULARS

(don't miss Phoebe's proud expression)

and without any fanfare whatsoever produces THIS

iPhone DigiBino'ed Image by Corey Husic

which makes Hodge's day, my day, Phoebe's day and perhaps his. Hard to tell with such a self-effacing young man. This would be remarkable enough, but Corey is the Last Living Person On Earth to Not Own a Cellphone. The Harvard Crimson even interviewed him about it. 

So he grabs a random iPhone, makes a tripod out of his lanky body, and produces this image. And we all have something good to remember that beautiful owl by. The lens flare at the bottom just adds to the magic, I think. 

For the next ten minutes, I tried valiantly and failed to produce anything usable. Then the owl turned and hopped into deeper cover. He was done with us and our yakkin'. 

iPhone DigiBino'ed Image by Corey Husic

Phoebe's comment: "He can do ANYTHING." I'm inclined to agree.

photo by Corey Husic

He took this photo, too, which pretty much sums up the perfect birthday in the perfect place: Mount Auburn Cemetery. Sweet Auburn! home to magnificent trees, flowers, sculpture, coywolves, wild turkeys, foxes, sparrows, warblers, wrens, thrushes, orioles, tanagers, the all-seeing, all-noticing Hodge and OWLS. 

Thank you, MAC, thank you Corey, Phoebe, and Hodge, for spending the perfect day with me.

Celebrating at Mount Auburn Cemetery

It never even occurred to me that celebrating my birthday in a cemetery was anything to remark upon, until someone remarked upon it.

Mount Auburn Cemetery is one of my happy places. It's a place of great beauty, tranquility, comfort and happiness for me. I saw so many of my life birds there--warblers, vireos, my first summer tanager...the list goes on and on. 

When I was a student, I used to read between the Sphinx's great paws. I didn't realize that sitting there could be construed as disrespectful. When the leaves were golden and the air was sweet and I couldn't stand the inside of a library for another second I'd go nestle on her stony bosom and read there. 

We saw what looked like hawk pellets there, and Phoebe climbed up for a second to retrieve them.

Corey and I dissected them, agreeing that the robust claws and teeth said gray squirrel to us. 

We thought they were hawk pellets because they were too small and disorganized to be good owl pellets. Yep, hawks cast pellets too. Saw a harrier cough one up once, and ran to retrieve it when she left.

The Sphinx stares stonily at this gorgeous little chapel. Look at those flower beds! They look like hyacinths in May, or lupines in June--but this is late July. What are they?

An annual called Angelonia, or summer snapdragon. Angelonia salicarifolia (Scrophulariaceae). Native from Mexico to the West Indies. I love it, love it love it. I have planted one here and one there in my flower borders, but never massed them like this. Brilliant! Makes me wonder if they grew them from seed in the greenhouses. I want to try this too. Heat and drought tolerant. And...deer don't like it!

There are no deer in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, something which amazes me. It is very well fenced, but still...there are foxes, coywolves and wild turkeys...hmm.

A sourwood tree in full bloom. Those pendant clusters of creamy bells make a fabulous honey. "Hit's got a whang to it," said a gentleman from Bristol, Virginia. I think of him every time I taste sourwood honey. This is a very large sourwood. It's native to Appalachia, a small understory tree.

Daylilies, reaching toward the light, remind me of angels blowing their trumpets. Mt. Auburn's trees are so huge and mature it must be quite a challenge to grow anything that needs full sun.

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Corey appreciates an ancient weeping beech. People have gone in the green rooms beneath its canopy and carved the heck out of it. Why do they do that? It's vandalism, pure and simple. I love finding beeches around Cambridge that haven't been carved, by virtue of being in the front yards of elegant homes. They're out there. You just have to look for them. It's a small miracle when you find one in a public place that doesn't have somebody's dopey initals on it.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery is paradise for tree freaks. Wonder what that weird-barked thing is? Well, trot on over and read the label! It's an arboretum, that's what it is, a bird sanctuary, a sculpture garden, a park. And a cemetery.

We love it here. The perfect expotition: Hodge in the lead, Corey and Phoebs entwined, me bringing up the rear, digging around, smelling flowers, reading labels, pontificating about this plant or this dropping or that tree or this flower. Bla bla bla bla. They don't seem to mind.

Hodge points out the Roxbury puddingstone that proud and prominent citizens of this Boston suburb used for their headstones. Pretty it ain't, all conglomerated as it is, but it's authentic. I like authentic.

Corey for scale. I wonder how they got that monster there?

On this expotition, we break with tradition (being hungry as usual) and have our Watertown Diner breakfast before our hike. Mmmm. Hash.

My favorite diner of them all. Hash. You must try the hash. Now, hash can run the gamut from pasty red Alpo (with subtle overtones of puke) to absolutely divine. WD's hash is stringy, slightly dry, exquisitely beefy (think rump roast flavor); it has small chunks of carrot and new potato, and the next time I'm going there I'm ordering just hash. So, so delish. Phoebe is now a believer. Her own mother turned her on to hash.

I love being around these two. The glow coming off them puts neon to shame.

Every now and then I force the shadowy, notoriously camera-shy but impossibly cute Hodge to submit to a quick snapshot. Follow @khmacomber on Instagram. 699 followers can't be wrong!