All Saints' Sunday

Was today (slightly early celebration), and it is really lovely when the sun breaks through just very suddenly and shines through the smoke of the incense at the end of the service.

And it just so happened that this afternoon, I had already planned to go to Cathays Cemetary (no mockery from the gallery, please. Thank you.) for an Autumn Tree Walk :) The coolest thing was the black cat that I saw toodling about; black cats are lucky here! (We'll see if this picture is clear enough.)

Cathays Cemetary is about a 5 minute bike ride from my house; it was founded in the mid 1800s and may be the 3rd largest cemetary in the country. When it was built, it was Cardiff's largest green space for people to use, so it was where they went to walk and enjoy nature. A good number of the tree types common to cemetaries were also helpful in combatting the heavy pollution of the city, since it was an industrial and mining center. Birch trees shed their bark and this eliminates the impurities that they take in from the air!

The trees were not at their peak yet. Some have already changed color and lost their leaves and some are just at the beginning. But learning about them was still quite interesting, especially the connotations that species like the yew, rowan, holly, pine and cypress have with death, the afterlife and religious traditions.

Every part of the yew tree is poisonous (except for the flesh of the berries). Druids buried their dead near yew trees and they were places of prayer and meeting. Bowmen apparently preferred bows made of yew since it is flexible and strong. A chemical extract from the foliage is now used in cancer medicines. Some yews in Britain are 3000 years old!

Even though we think of holly as a Christmas plant, it is also a common cemetary plant, again for its evergreen (life in the middle of death) quality. It is a symbol of goodwill, peace, health and happiness and has been a religious symbol for centuries.

There are many myths surrounding it. It is considered bad luck to have holly in one's house after Twelfth Night. Berries grow on the tree on the previous year's growth, and both male and female trees have to be present for berry production. Who knew?


The Rowan tree was my favorite. There are several different kinds with either white or red berries.

In the yard there grows a Rowan.
Thou with reverent care should'st tend it.
Holy is the tree there growing.
Holy likewise are its branches.
On its boughs the leaves are holy.
And its berries yet more holy.

excerpt from The Kalevala
(The Kalevala is an epic poem of Finnish folklore. I had to look it up.)

One funny thing from the walk is that the Sweet Gum is known as Liquid Amber here, and the leaves are quite pretty when you are not stepping on the little balls barefooted. Since my daddy is not a big fan of these trees, I had to laugh to think that he would be happy to send the UK as many as they would like :)

My random fixation on different animals and birds has been mentioned previously. Another creature that I am obsessed with is the magpie. They remind me of blue jays at home because they seem rather saucy and smarty-pants-ish. I like smarty-pants-ish. They are black and white, with metallic blue-black wings. I prowled around trying to get close enough to one to photograph one today, but to no avail. A few years ago, one led me on quite a funny hopping photo shoot through the ruins of a monastery in York before I got a sort of decent picture. And then my film was black and white, so it really wasn't what i wanted!