ET is a gardener at the Naval Cemetery Landscape. He has taken hundreds of photos around the NCL throughout the seasons – of plants, insects, and birds. He presented his observations to groups over the course of 2024, most recently to an online audience. You can watch his virtual presentation here or below!
Here at the Naval Cemetery Landscape, in a place that humans have designated as a place of death, life thrives. In a city where real estate is a valuable resource, the tide of progress is stemmed by the dead themselves. This, in turn, has created a refuge where life is allowed to be as it was before the city (well, almost). This is a place where wildflowers still grow in the midst of a concrete jungle. The lives of these flowers support an ever evolving cast of characters that ebb and flow with the changing seasons. The flowers live, and they die, enabling new flowers to take their places. Each flower blooms in its own place and time. The insects come to feed on the flowers and live their own cycles of life and death. The cycles of the flowers and the insects bring the birds, each in their own time, from their own places.