Homebound 1.5

This will likely be the last of the "Homebound" series.  Germany is opening up - most shops can be open, some factories have returned to limited production, rules are in place for masks and continued social distancing, but the hubby and I will still follow the "hunker down" rules for a few more weeks, just to be on the safe side.  

But we've never been really homebound - we could always get out to purchase food and exercise; fresh air is a balm.  Often, our walks start in the cemetery that's just behind our little house.

You've seen posts about cemeteries and gravestones if you've been reading this blog.  They're quite different here compared to most in the US - they're more like the old-fashioned church cemeteries with headstones and  little plots and they are usually carefully tended and decorated with shrubs and flowers, sometimes with mementoes. It's a peaceful, interesting place to wander.

More folks these days are opting for either anonymous burials, where the urn is placed in the ground but there's no marker for the individuals, or a "group" plot where you get a marker. Those smaller marble posts each have several names on them.

But what's REALLY different here is, in almost all cemeteries, families rent the site.  The rental period lasts 15 to 30 years and if you don't renew the lease, the headstone is discarded, the grave cleaned up and made available to the next soul.  Of course, the practice started because Europe is a small place and they were running out of space, but it is also expensive for families, or in other cases, there's no remaining family to pay the lease.  These days, too, fewer people belong to the church, more people decide to be cremated, and there are other options than the standard burial plot.  We've bought a place in a forest, for example.

So, when the lease is up they clean out and clean off the plot. (They figure the corpse has been naturally recycled by that time....)

Often, there are shrubs - boxwoods, evergreens, smaller plants. We've rescued more than a few and decorated our yard as well as some others with boxwoods, rhododendrons, poppies, decorative grasses, heather, but if we don't grab it and save it, it all gets thrown into the big container that gets hauled away when it's full.

Yesterday, getting ready to walk, I took a peek at the container where I find these occasional treasures, and something bright red caught my eye - an azalea!  Wow - it had just been dug up and was big and heavy but on the wrong side of the container. The nice gardener helped me fish it out.  

And here it is, in an amazing clash of colors with the blooming lilacs. Later, the spiderwort in the front of the pot will add another purple. I hope that with lots of water and nice soothing words it will survive the transition from Friedhof to Topf (from the cemetery to a pot) and enjoy its new lease on life.