valleynews.com stalwart and Grand View Memorial Park blogger Lisa Burks has a pair of posts -- one looking at times past, the other at an uncertain future...

• First up, the Glendale City Council will review the Grand View situation at its June 12 meeting, as mentioned in her valleynews post about the cemetery's increasingly dry conditions.

  The National Weather Service reports that the Los Angeles area has had less than four inches of rain this season, nearly a foot below normal precipitation levels, making this the driest year in history since it began record-keeping in 1877.

  Nowhere in Glendale is that more evident than on the increasingly arid grounds of Grand View Memorial Park, which hasn't been watered in nearly a year.

  Most of the grass is now dead and picker-filled, many of the flowering bushes are shriveling and large palm tree branches are dropping to the ground making it increasingly difficult to safely walk to grave markers, particularly in Section M.

• Though the cemetery was closed for Memorial Day for the first time in 122 years, Burks takes a look back at how locals commemorate servicemen and women in times long past:

  The earliest records of Memorial Day ceremonies held at Grand View that I've found date back to the 1920s, in old news clippings from The Glendale Evening News housed at the Glendale Central Public Library's special collections room.

  In 1924, when Grand View was advertised as an American Legion Cemetery and several months before construction began on the West Mausoleum, 75 Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) Civil War veterans' graves were decorated on Memorial Day morning under the direction of two men from the GAR Gen. N. P. Banks' post: Past Commander T. M. Barrett and Comrade R. N. Taylor, post officer of the day.

  Graves of 112 heroes from all wars, including the Spanish-American War, were decorated on Memorial Day in 1926 with "California's most beautiful flowers" during "impressive services" sponsored by both the GAR's Banks' post and the Burbank American Legion, with the Banks post's chaplain, Rev. Charles R. Norton, officiating the "ritualistic service."

  It was reported that people from cities throughout the San Fernando Valley attended the elaborate event to assist decorating the graves with garlands of flowers in addition to the floral arrangements placed by the Memorial Day committee.