Graves and Swedes.

Yesterday, I volunteered for the first time at Rock Creek Park. BR picked me up and after meeting with the group at the ranger lodge, we headed down to Battleground National Cemetery to work our butts off.

Now, I'm not a big Civil War geek, but I had fun yesterday. We each cleaned one or two grave stones, lightly scrubbing and peeling back years upon years of dirt and moss, careful not to hurt the marble stone underneath. We could see the names again, of soldiers killed in the battle of Fort Stevens just up the road from us on Georgia Avenue-- Ellis, Richardson, Kennedy, Schlitzner-- faded, barely readable, but there. Boys 16, 18, 19 from New York, Maine, Pennsylvania, they were here.

We reset some of the headstones as well; dug up, hauled out, cleaned up, filled, reset to their two-foot height. Some stones had sunk so much that they were only eight inches above the ground. Some stones were double-struck, another name on the buried bottom of the stone, where the stone cutter/ingraver made a mistake, some were clean, the white marble shining up at us after the century of mud had been rinsed off.

Re-burying the stones became a huge task in itself. By the afternoon, our task-force had dwindled from forty to about ten people. A team of six reset the remaining headstones. We had a system and by 3p.m., we were done. Granted, we were dirty, sweaty, and our shoulders and legs hurt, but looking back at our work felt good. These fallen soldiers had their grave-site back after 140 years. We cleaned all 44 headstones and reset 19. We'll come back and do the rest on the next project.

BR took me home and I cleaned up, then we headed to Ashburn to pick up Cherie-- we were going to IKEA. BR took us the long way, we took White's Ferry across the Potomac. I didn't even know it existed! We got dinner at IKEA, but furniture-wise it was a bust since they didn't have what BR and Cherie wanted in stock. I, on the other hand, found a vase that works as a canister for my kitchen utensils! Yes! Finally!

We drove back through DC, listening to songs on XM's Soul Sounds channel that were full of innuendo. It was the end to a perfect day.