It seems to me that the thing with lawn ornaments is location, location, location...
Now, I'm just about the first person to go Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk!!! when I see a lawn peppered with Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, a mother skunk with a row of little skunks in tow, or a cement burro pulling a cart with flowers in it...
However, if I happened to encounter a large, nicely painted gnome, sitting on a toadstool as he reads from a book... maybe under a birch tree at the edge of a stream... well... that would be very nice indeed.
But, as Gaugie has commented,... a pack of cute little ceramic elves sitting on a wall leering at you while you are trying to work... well that's just no fun at all... Those elves are definitely asking to be kicked off the wall onto their keesters... (but no...Gaugie...don't do it... it isn't worth the brain-damage that would ensue..;-}>
Hmmm... Last year I almost bought a Venus de Milo-type bust to put over in my brother's small orchard. He doesn't live around here, but occasionally comes to visit the trees which he planted a few years ago. I thought it would be nice if Venus could...would it be stand or sit (what does a bust do???)... back in the orchard... just keeping an eye on things and maybe shooing away the odd deer that drops by to nibble on branches. But then I thought about the poor Venus when winter rolls around... probably sitting there, up to her neck in snow... freezing her... well, she doesn't have a butt, but freezing some parts off...with nobody to visit her except maybe an occasional chickadee that would probably drop by to defecate on her head... Well, the more I thought about the whole thing, the more that I realized that it just didn't seem quite right... so the orchard remains statue-less.
But yep, we have a couple of lawn ornaments around the farm... There's the unpainted frog next to the pond. He or she is quite serene...very naturalistic... not your grinning "Froggie Went A-Courting" type of frog. No, this frog sits Buddha-like, overseeing the goldfish pond which has now become a mecca for live frogs. On any summer day, you will see at least 2 or 3 of the older frogs sitting on rocks beside the pond, assuming the pose of The Great Frog Buddha, as they stare into nothingness with their gold-rimmed eyes. Meanwhile, younger spirited little frogs (rather disrespectfully) climb onto the Great Frog's head and use it as a diving platform when making their biggest leaps into the pond. I'm wondering if The Great Frog is responsible for all of the frog activity this year. Has word spread throughout all of frogdom that The Great Frog has been found. Have they all arrived to live within his benevolent shadow?... Is he considered a deity from an earlier age... perhaps from an age when the mighty nation of the frogs ruled over the earth? Do they believe that one day, he will awaken from his long slumber and lead them as they rise up to resume their proper place in the scheme of things?... Hmmm... these are ponderings for a lazy summer day...
And then there is the distinguished old lion in my garden... the Aslan of my Narnia... His slightly frowning countenance watches over the world from his bed of Silver King artemisia and perennial blue cornflowers.... his weathered concrete body aging majestically as the moss gradually advances to blanket him...
Yes... it all has to do with location... |
