23 February 2018

Dear Friends of Spring Hill Cemetery,

It was delightful to work the cemetery today with flowers blooming (first attachment shows the Luther Burbank narcissus peeking through the Zilhart enclosure). Eight of us gathered under a clear blue sky and tackled the winter debris clean up. Regional Parks kindly provided us a large dump truck and our usual array of tools. We also had Brad with us to reset stones. We had a very productive session.

Arriving at the cemetery, the paths were buried under leaves (attachment 2). We spent much of our time raking and hauling debris to the dump truck. There were so many leaves that the large dump truck was completely filled. We also spent time pulling up invasive plants (broom, acacia, ivy, and berry bushes), as well as digging sprouting grass off of the paths. We were able to clean up all paths, leaving them in very good order.

Our other focus of the day was the resetting of Olive Johnson's headstone, which had been uncovered this past November (attachment 3). Along with resetting the head stone, we reset Olive's footstone, and Hattie Zilhart's footstone. Although we did probe the area around the recent Johnson and Heffron finds, we did not uncover any new stones today. The ground was fairly hard, as it has been a dry winter, so we will probe again once the ground is softened by rains.

As you can see from the 4th attachment, the cemetery is absolutely lovely. Thanks to all of you who were able to join in the effort today, keeping the cemetery in good shape. The last attachment shows our work crew, with the newly reset Johnson stone in the foreground, and the recently reset Heffron stones in the back left of the picture.

Our next workday is set for April 13th. Please come and join us if you can.

Attachment #1
Luther Burbank Narcissus

Attachment #2
Leaves

Attachment #3
Setting stone

Attachment #4
Last shot

Attachment #5
Group