LETTER: What does the sign mean?

Jane Briley

5th Generation Union County Resident

My father and mother were farmers when I was a child. They rented farms and when a better-quality farm or larger farm became available, they moved the family to this new home. Mom always wanted to have peonies at each of the farm and we never knew until late fall which farm would become available for us so she was unable to transplant her flowers but that had never been a problem.

All her starters for those flowers came from the cemeteries. My mother would go to my father’s grandparents’ graves to start the pretty red and pink peonies and then she would go to her great-grandparents grave for the beautiful white peonies. We did this every time we moved which was about every three or four years. When we moved to town, we did it again. When my sister married and moved to Casey they took them to her home. When I moved out of my apartment into my own home I went to the cemeteries for the starters again.

These plants must be almost 130 years old since those ancestors died in the 1890s.

During the Memorial Day celebration, we went to honor our ancestors with flowers. We remarked how beautiful the flowers were at Afton’s Greenlawn Cemetery and even spoke of how my nephew and his spouse were wanting to start some of the family peonies and that we should come back and next time with the shovel. I didn’t realize what was happening at the other entrance to the cemetery. There had been a sign placed on the gate through which we left that we didn’t notice.

When visiting the cemeteries a few days later to pick up the wreaths I had left, I encountered a couple of visitors who asked me if I had seen the sign. They said that it read that we had to remove all permanent plantings before Nov. 1, 2023. I was confused with what they had seen.

They said that it sounded as if after that date they would be destroying all the peonies and iris in the cemetery. I had noticed that they had a corporate mowing company mowing when I came in the cemetery. For over 100 years the caretakers for the cemetery had it mowed or mowed it themselves and just mowed around the flowers. They continued to grow year after year, making the cemetery so beautiful. So, what is going to happen after Nov. 1? Are they going to go into the cemetery and spray those symbols of our love for our ancestors with a chemical they use for weeds?

Why after 100 years are our flowers suddenly weeds? What is next, will the stones suddenly be in the way of the mower too? Will we have to remove them? Please tell me that we misunderstood the purpose of the sign.