Ready for Halloween

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In the last decade or so, Halloween has become as big a holiday for decorating as Christmas is.  A lot of people put up various decorations, including skeletons, fog machines, a twinkling lights.  And some of us put up an entire graveyard.

I've been putting together a graveyard every year for at least a decade.  You can see in the picture three of the 13 graves that I've installed, using 36" fence posts and phone headstones.  Not shown here are the solar flood lights that will make them visible after sunset.

Besides the "headstones", each grave consists of uncut grass with a sprinkling of leaves.  I have tried to put things like skeleton hands sticking out of the "grave", but I haven't much success that way.  What I am doing is relatively low effort.  Late September or early October, when I mow the lawn, I leave  3' x 8' rectangles uncut.  When I'm ready to go in late October, the grass on the graves is usually 5" - 7" tall.  Fortunately, this year we have an abundance of leaves already on the ground, so I was able to further enhance the plots.

This year, I finished the graveyard 5 days before Halloween.  The reason for the delay was the hardness of the ground.  It took me quite a while to pound 13 fence posts into the ground.  I finished that last night, and today I was able to hang the foam headstones on the posts.  Scattering leaves completed the scene.

Next weekend, I'll be taking the graves down again, and I will be mowing the lawn.

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