A Year in Pictures – Moss-Covered Urn

[swan_tower]

This work by http://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

October will be a themed month, sort of — the theme is “October-ish stuff,” which is to say autumn color, cemeteries, and bones. (Only two photos of bones, if you’re put off by that sort of thing.)

To start us off, I have one of my favorite photos from my 2013 trip to England and France. This is a funerary urn in Highgate Cemetery, covered in a velvet layer of moss. I know all the growth on and around the monuments in Highgate is not good for them, and people are working to restore the ones that have been badly damaged . . . but of course the partially ruined state of the place constitutes a large part of its aesthetic appeal.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[sara]

...actually, it's usually removing the moss from monuments that does the damage, at least if you do it chemically. Some mechanical removal is OK, but in general, in a damp climate, you just want to leave them alone and let them be mossy.

Now, keeping the grass down and making sure they don't grow trees and things under them, that's another story. But the moss, you let that be.

[swan_tower]

Fair point. Sadly, Highgate also has a lot of grass and trees and suchlike interfering with things.

And ivy.

Lots of ivy.