Rural Graveyard : fall & winter

Two views taken several years ago, with my first digital camera. Some of the tombstones are older than the church; Catholic settlers relocated their family graves from their homesteads when consecrated ground became available. A number of WWI veterans are buried there, and a lot of infants and children from the early days.

Even though I wasn't really trying to capture this when I took the pictures, I like them together. The winter photo was brutally cold and dark at midday; Vitamin D deficiency (rickets) probably accounts for some of the dead. The fall photo shows the almost unbelievable fertility of the land that the settling families risked so much for. This land was tallgrass prairie before settlement, part of the 19th c. hunting ground of the Sioux.