Friday, July 18, 2014

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Oak Hill

I had a few minutes to spare while my wife was in shopping, so I wandered over to a cemetery across the street.  This is in Bloomington Minnesota, not at first glance the best place to find old monuments. It became a rapidly growing suburb in the 1950's and 60's, but did have enough of an earlier settlement that Oak Hill Cemetery contains graves going clear back to the 1850's.

In my quest for tree shaped tombstones I only found one specimen, but a rather nice one...


A nice tall specimen, with a much newer Madonna standing at the base.

The inscription is on an "open book" supported by a rather odd jumble of sticks and some kind of ball (?).


But the fun part was hidden way up near the top......


A very nicely rendered woodpecker!

Oak Hill cemetery did contain two additional objects that caught the eye of a "tree stump" collector. Recall my posting on "widow's chairs" carved to look like stumps?  Seen in Hastings, MN was this:


Well, the groundskeeper at Oak Hill apparently decided to get rid of a couple of annoying trees by doing this to them:




Odd.  Instead of tombstones shaped like tree stumps we have tree stumps shaped like tombstones!

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