Before Fake Flowers

Memorial Day Weekend and we'll be making the rounds of cemeteries. While choosing which fake flowers to put on which graves, I always think of how we used to decorate on what we then called Decoration Day.
The morning would begin by collecting a bunch of empty jars and a digger, also known as a garden trowel. Then we'd pump some water in a bucket and go around the yard collecting peonies, spirea, iris and any other flowers in bloom before heading down to Grandma Ridnour's where we gathered even more blossoms of iris and peonies and ferns.

Our bouquets would look something like this, only with many, many more blooms.
At the cemetery, I would dig a small hole to support a jar (otherwise the wind might blow it over), Mom would add water and then we made a floral and fern arrangement.

For my Dad's baby sister's grave, I would have made a delicate little bouquet like this.

I will admit that it is much easier the way we decorate now with the fake flowers, but it seems the old way of observing Decoration Day was more meaningful.
Or does it just seem that way because I was with my Mom and Grandma?

"Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours."
(From Decoration Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)