Garden Tour

[indar]

Before the solar-powered whirlygigs,

the cast-resin, big-eyed animals,

the plaster garden gnomes,

even the pink plastic flamingos,

there were glass gazing balls.

It's obvious yard art culture devolves.

[Gyppo]

A wry comment on many aspects of modern life not just garden globes.  A fine picture, showing what's missing.

Gyppo

[Tracy Mitchell]

Great picture!  Love it.

Here's one from me:



The devolution of yard art is so quintessentially American--and
not in a good way.  Pink plastic flamingos, ok.  Figurines of black 
boys fishing? Fourth of July approaches.  How about a life-sized 
George Wallace wrapped in the flag in his block-the-doorway-pose? 
Put him on a pedestal of limestone with the fossilized bones of those
indigenous folks who in 30,000 years left no footprint but Anasazi habitats.

Yard art was a sub-theme of a poem I wrote 5 or so years ago.
The other stuff edited out, here it is:



           God’s Country

. . . .
A spray-painted silhouette cowboy 

waves toward the state aid highway
north of Swanville, tilted and rusting
as if finally tired of taming the west.  

I often wave back when driving by – 
roll down my window and yell How-DEE! 
at the top of my voice.

Mostly I feel better for the effort.  

This is the land of yard ornaments, power lines
and windmills. 

They remind of God’s beneficence,
his unconditional gift of our continent 
and all it holds –  

the cement-cast elk and bear, once real, 
we’re told 

like those who lived in symbiosis, 
before the buffalo 
and the weeds
were cleared.
. . . .
As the sun comes and goes
epoxy deer wait by the pond.
. . . .
Up the road twenty or so miles 
a telephone pole painted and feathered – 
half buried at an odd angle, to look 
like an arrow struck the earth.

Hello from the clouds.

Hello 
from Little Crow.

----------------------------------------------------------

Sorry Linda,

Hijack is over.

Cheers.

and have a great 4th.

T






 

[indar]

Thank you both Gyppo and Tracy.

So Gyppo, I take it this decline is an international thing?

Tracy< I whipped up ta little something to replace the poem that's been stewing on PYP for weeks-months maybe--and you post two brilliant writes on the subject. I'm going to make a last trip for this summer to Idyllwild (One road up and down and fire season is about to start) so I won't be doing fives. Next month a "Yard Art Series" the gauntlet is down.

 

[Gyppo]

Indar.

The ornaments get more and more tacky each year.  There's a house not far from me where they have some very poor Christmas ornaments they set up about five years ago, and they just sit there, in very slowly decaying plastic glory, al year around.  The sun has bleached most of the colour out of them, the reindeer are almost albino,  and often spend months laid on their sides if a particularly strong wind blows them over.

Their upright polar bear never even looked much like a polar bear even when it was new   More like  failed attempt to mould a seal balancing a ball on its nose.

I sometimes wonder if the occupier even notices them.  But every December they plug them back in and the ghostly apparitions light up once again.

Yet the lady of the house will meticulously weed out any stray greenery which blights her pea shingle.  I've spoken to her occasionally in passing and she seems like a nice lady.

I am pleased to say that I've not seen a pink plastic flamingo in years.

People are strange

Gyppo

 

[indar]

TO ARMS, Gyppo! We must fight this trend with all our might!

[Gyppo]

It's like the Halloween pumpkin lamps still rotting and oozing on doorsteps a week after the event.  Do these things become invisible to the owner?

I always take down my May Day votive offering  at the end of the day.  Leaving it up overnight seems wrong.

Gyppo 

[Mark]

Huh. It's not a big thing here, at least in my neck of the woods. Garden decorations run more to metalwork representations of plants and animals, no gnomes or flamingos, perhaps a plaster frog or bird. Saw some real flamingos outside of town the other day; we've had so much rain all the marshy bits and farm dams are brimming.     

[indar]

It's like the Halloween pumpkin lamps still rotting and oozing on doorsteps a week after the event.  Do these things become invisible to the owner?

My daughters had a high school friend whose parents walked a good portion of their neighborhood every day. They invented a game in which documented Christmas wreaths still hanging on houses after the holidays had passed. One year the winner was a mid-July wreath. How could anyone stand the horror of having a Christmas wreath still on their house thu the tulips, the lilacs, the fireworks the high heat? Didn't it give them nightmares? (I feel a poem coming on).

[indar]

 Garden decorations run more to metalwork representations of plants and animals

I could get on board with that. Thanks Mark