An Armistice Day garden

Whenever we visit my sister who has a house on Chatauqua Lake in central New York State, Mark and I always try to spend an afternoon wandering the grounds of the historic Chautauqua Institution.  Today Chautauqua is a center for the arts, education, religion and recreation. They offer classes, lectures, reading groups, performances — all in a beautiful setting, filled with the historic "cottages" and Institute buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In those days "chautauqua" was the word used to describe summer learning programs; everyone took part in one — in their own town or went off to the nearest traveling Chautauqua.

The last time we explored the grounds of the original Chautauqua Institution, we took a different route and discovered this little WWI memorial. We stopped to remember this soldier — but the gardener (and the historian) in me questions whether the ivy growing around this monument could really be from the Argonne Forest.

After all, the Meuse-Argonne was the scene of the final Allied offensive — and the greatest American battle — towards the very end of the war and photos indicate a devastated landscape. Though perhaps by the time this plaque was dedicated in 1921, ivy was again greening the area and this is indeed a remnant from that battlefield-turned-cemetery. Most of the Americans buried in the 130 acre cemetery were killed in the battle that took place on its site. 

The cemetery at the Argonne Forest, France, in 1919 (above) and today (below).

Comments

[Rae Kaiser]

Chautauqua... would we not all be better if we all had a Summer Learning Program... actually I have a planned Winter Learning Program to learn to analysis handwriting. If will be fun to learn something that I don't really need to know.

Stunning photo of the cemetery.

[Altoon]

Thanks for the interesting history lesson. Your skepticism about the ivy got me thinking of a pre-internet era scam, selling ivy from famous battlefields. But maybe the ivy did revive by 1921.

[Lisa at Greenbow]

I can imagine some person bringing home a sprig of ivy to keep it alive as they would do the memories of the persons they wish to remember.