Just digging in a graveyard – an ordinary thing that ordinary people do…

Recap: I clear out overgrown graves in my local cemetery.

Link: Four more headstones rescued from Mother Nature’s clutches

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Small shout out to Lisa, a gravestone restoration expert who has taken interest in my posts! I hope to be able to get more of your wisdom later on!

I don’t do anything to the gravestones themselves, aside from washing fresh mud off of them. I am trained by the University of Texas Horticulture Department to do “garden restoration.”

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How to clean a grave: DON’T

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Here’s why: Hanging out in an old graveyard

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Now, before I get into the grave-clearing, I want to give Olive fans and the Cemetery Project supporters a special thank you.

I wanted to say thank you. I mean it, truly. All of your donations have made my project 1000000x easier!

April showers bring May flowers, and ants – which brings a shower of tears down a certain nerd’s face.

(I hope that was a clever play on words and not totally lame lol)

This isn’t a grave I worked on. It was cleared out pretty well, and didn’t need anything that I could have done for it. However, I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to film the ants. This grave was easier to show the anthills, and this is exactly the same as every other grave that I HAVE been trying to work on.

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My biggest concern is that I don’t know what kind of ants these are. I come from Texas, which is the land of fire ants. Fire ants aren’t just insects that leave a painful bite – it has venom in it.

This venom hurts like hell. While uncommon, fire ants can cause serious health problems – depending on the number of bites, or if you have an allergic reaction to them.

An analogy: A single wasp sting doesn’t kill a person (unless they have an allergic reaction), but getting stung by an entire wasp nest could very well kill them. This is the same with fire ants – albeit this is less common.

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Since I do not know the type of ants that have made these gravestones their abode, I didn’t want to fuck with them. However, this is secondary.

In theory, I could do something about the ants so they aren’t a problem for me. Except I can’t do that.

Here’s why the ants are actually putting a stop to my project. I have a very strict gravestone policy:

WHATEVER I DO CAN EASILY BE UNDONE.

Ant poison is too risky for my comfort. Certain bug-killers can actually kill a garden faster than an unwanted insect/animal can. Whatever I did with ant poison could not be undone (at least not easily undone).

If I’m not 100% confident in what I’m doing, I’m not going to do it with a grave. I will sometimes take risks in other areas, but NOT this one.

I’m not joking. I inspected EIGHT other graves, and they ALL had ants! 🙁

Should I get protective gear? Is there protective gear out there for ants? An ant hazmat suit? All advice is appreciated!

I feel bad that this post is kinda boring. I decided to show you some other things I’ve found in this graveyard, as well as my decision-making when choosing a gravestone to work on.

I have a process of deciding which graves I will work on, and which ones I will leave as is. I decided to include a clip of a few graves I chose to leave as is, and why.

I came across this curious symbol, and wanted to share it to see if anyone recognized it? I have no idea what it is.

Thanks for your help!

Oftentimes when I make a meme of an image **I** took, it gets blurry.

Here’s what it says, in case it’s too blurry to read:

104th U.S. INF.

I’m going to report this one to the grave keeper. I’m worried that this grave fell face-down. That could have done some damage to the engraving.

Why don’t I try to move it?

A gravestone has a base that sometimes breaks off (like now). If I tried to pick this up, it would immediately fall over again. The more it fell, the more damage it would sustain.

It’s like constantly dropping an unprotected iphone. The more you drop it, the bigger the cracks will become. Some of the screen might even chip off.

This is especially the case with old gravestones. It is much safer for me to leave it as is rather than messing with it.

At some point, a gravestone becomes a matter of historical preservation that goes beyond garden restoration. No matter how gentle I am, anything that I could do to this grave could put it in danger of sustaining damages.

Think of this like a book. A newer book can be taken care of by proper storage and keeping the dust off of it. The older the book gets, the more delicate it becomes.

The pages get stiffer, they crinkle, and they run a chance of tearing. The ink is seriously fading. The binding is falling apart, and the cover is beginning to break. A 100 year old book needs more care than a 20 year old book.

I don’t have grave-restoration training. I’m not touching a century old grave (or close to a century old). You could not pay me to do it.

Sometimes I decide to leave a grave alone, simply due to its placement in the graveyard. If it’s on the edge of a slope, I’m leaving it alone. It’s just too risky.

I also won’t do graves where the headstones are half-sunken in. At that point, it needs a grave-restoration professional to lift up and return to its proper position.

I hope this was interesting, and not a disorganized mess!