Tree Shaped Tombstones-a few of my Favorites

Oh, I shouldn't really play favorites, but a few "trees" just please me more than others.

Here is the top half of a towering 14 foot specimen in Hudson, Wisconsin..

Notice the broken off branch.  It is stabilized structurally by contact with a lower branch.  I have no contemporary source on this, but it rather seems as if the branch violently severed reflects a life suddenly cut short.  Going down the trunk a ways we find...

Jennie must have been an artist.   Going down to the base of the tree we find this:

This is not an eroded, damaged bit of stone work.  No, somebody carved this on purpose as a tipped over and broken flower pot.  I think Jennie's husband cared a lot about her, and lost her too soon.

In the same cemetery, but over on the edge where the groundskeeping is a little dodgy...

It is a tree shaped tombstone doing a very good job of imitating a real tree!

Once in a while you find a specimen that is well fashioned, has the light just right and seems to have all the right elements.

A "rustic cross" style with real lichens, fake ferns, vines, and dying dove, plus a name placard.  The latter almost looks sacriligious...isn't that where IRNI is supposed to go?  The stones flanking on either side have inscriptions, one is Sonne, which is "son" in German.

This is my current all time favorite flourish.

A husband and wife buried side by side.  And holding hands for eternity. 

Finally, I just have to speculate sometimes.  Did the fellow who ordered this tombstone, and its rather odd phallic protrusion, think about whether folks a century later would see it and think him a bit of a jokester?