Bonaventure Don

10/04/2024

Folks, hurricane cleanup in Bonaventure is taking longer than expected. The most recent news is that the cemetery will be closed until next Friday at the earliest. No historically important monuments were damaged, but many trees are leaning into other trees, and the city can't let the public enter until that has been cleaned up.

This photo is from Hurricane Mathew, for effect.

09/10/2024

Here's a decent article about Midnight that would have been even better if they hadn't stolen one of my Bonaventure photos for their artwork.

If you have ever visited or enjoyed pictures of Savannah, Georgia, you may remember the beautiful iconic fountain in Forsyth Park, the…

08/21/2024

This is happening here, be aware of who you book your tours through.

08/21/2024

It’s a rainy night in Georgia.

08/08/2024

I’m an hour late but happy Light House day! Here’s a shot of the Cockspur lighthouse I took a few years ago.

08/06/2024

06/26/2024

One of the last magnolia flowers of the year.

06/21/2024

Busy day in the cemetery

06/17/2024

Some sad news from Laurel Grove Cemetery South. A giant Live Oak fell and damaged several graves. It's hard to tell how many are broken, but there's a giant pile of limbs now where there should be monuments.

Laurel Grove South is the resting place of many of Savannah's early Black religious leaders and notable figures from the Civil Rights era, including Savannah's W.W. Law. I'll add a link to more info on Law in the first comment. To be clear, Law's monument was not damaged.

06/06/2024

On most of my tours I tell people that during new Moons and full Moons, the tides can sometimes cover the marsh. This photo is from two days ago, when we had a new Moon.

That's Tybee, and you can see Fort Pulaski at the bottom left.

Our little slice of heaven....
(hightide)

📸 by Kiki Greenwood

04/28/2024

Y’all smell this magnolia!

04/09/2024

I didn’t get a chance to see this eclipse but here’s a throwback to 2017, when my son and I saw it from Lake Santee in South Carolina.

04/02/2024

The Adler monument. Photo by my buddy, Bonnie

10/10/2023

It’s been almost 30 years since Sylvia Shaw Judson’s bronze sculpture Bird Girl first appeared in Jack Leigh’s iconic cover photograph for John Berendt’s best-selling book 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.' When he took the image at Bonaventure Cemetery in 1993, even Leigh didn’t know the name of the artist of this work that would spawn a devotional following that is still going strong in 2023. ⁣
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Although Bird Girl will forever be associated with Bonaventure because of 'Midnight in the Garden of Evil,' it was not originally intended for a cemetery. The location wasn’t a complete stretch, however. Bonaventure was created as a garden cemetery, and Bird Girl was originally designed as a garden sculpture. In 1846, Peter Wiltberger purchased Bonaventure, which had been established as a plantation in the 1760s, to develop as a public cemetery when the rural or garden cemetery movement was emerging in the United States. With its beautiful setting overlooking the Wilmington River and avenues of live oaks, Bonaventure represented a new type of graveyard that also functioned as a public park. Following the Civil War, Savannahians increasingly bought lots at Bonaventure, adding funerary monuments by makers in Savannah, the northeast, and Italy. ⁣
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Visit the Bird Girl at the Telfair Academy in the exhibition, 'Before Midnight: Boneventure and the Bird Girl.'⁣
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https://www.telfair.org/exhibitions/before-midnight-bonaventure-and-the-bird-girl/⁣
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08/29/2023

Rest in peace, Sonny Seiler. This town will miss you.