A garden by the sea

    The garden at Dunrobin, looking down from the terrace.

    The air in this part of Scotland is so clean that lichen grows at a pace - here's a close-up of a branch of that quince tree:

 

    Searching for family graves across the Firth in Portmahomack proved fruitless - even with the help of the churchyard records - as the lichen had rendered all the headstones illegible.

    The Discovery Centre is well worth a visit, though.

Comments

[Toffeeapple]

Lichens are amazing things; we have a lot here too.

[Cornflower]

They are amazing!

[Fran H-B]

You can almost feel the fresh air from your photos. Plenty of lichen, especially on blackthorn here on the south coast.

[Val]

Gorgeous photos. I love the idea of a garden by the sea but it must be a challenge.
Just a thought but have you tried asking any local (or not so local) genealogical societies to see if any one has made any gravestone map ? It seems that occasionally has happened, perhaps not likely but sometimes someone has made one and it's very useful to have a record to refer to before the details are weathered out of existence.
Also I've come across odd extra information on burial records in local record offices ..our local Church records included a small notebook ..written by the sexton I assume, which harshly explained why my Great Grandmother didn't wish her daughters to marry ..12 babies that didn't live long enough to be baptized or merit a formal entry in the records was explanation enough. I've also seen interesting comments written by the formal record entries too..you never quite know what you may find.

[Cornflower]

We did manage to find out a bit more, Val, quite by chance.
Having looked round the churchyard we then went into the church, which is now the Discovery Centre I've linked to above as the area is a very important Pictish site. I got talking to one of the volunteers on duty and asked about the graves. He produced the book which lists all the stones, and page after page gave some sort of indication of position and then read "illegible", "illegible", "illegible" and so on ...
However, this man knew a lot about local history and when I gave him my grandmother's maiden name he recognised the family immediately, mentioned one of Granny's older brothers and was able to tell me what became of his sons during the war. Not only that, he went off to his own house nearby, printed some pages from local records and came back with brief details and even photographs of the two young men in question - so kind of him.
How sad about your great grandmother, and all too common a situation, no doubt.