• Green End

    Say it With Flowers

    Say it with flowers… REAL ones There’s a tradition in the United States – and elsewhere – of placing flowers on the graves of loved ones as tokens of remembrance and respect. In fact, “sympathy flowers” (as they’re known in the funeral and flower marketing sectors) are a huge business for the death industry, accounting for millions in annual sales. Flowers are a wonderful way to show love and care, but a couple of trends have raised their heads in the last few decades – namely, artificial flowers and elaborate displays on artificial mounts. These create an unexamined burden on cemeteries, the environment, and landfills. Fortunately, these practices can change…

  • Green End

    Planting Grandma

    Cremated remains are considered personal property in Oregon, so the use of a cemetery for burying them isn’t required by law – that means the garden is just fine.

  • Green End

    Back to Earth Day with Natural Burial

    We get many things that we use in our daily lives from “the Land” – the food we eat, fiber for our clothes, and raw material for heat, homes, buildings, and roads. We’re surrounded by element-based things extracted or grown from the soil and fashioned into shapes we find useful or pleasing enough to consume. We’re also getting good at re-using the elements in that fiber, that liquid, that meltable plastic, so we don’t have to use virgin material, thereby reducing costs and impacts on the environment in the process. In fact, our bodies are some of the best recycling machines around. We eat foods that begin as soil, like…