Lawn Ornaments

I have always liked lawn ornaments.  There is nothing more beautiful than the original Don Featherstone pink plastic flamingo.  30 years ago, I bought my mom a pelican lawn ornament.  They say that you buy gifts you would like to have yourself.

My friend Karl in AK has the best lawn ornaments of anyone I know. There aren’t too many lawns up there, so I guess they are called yard ornaments.  You know you are going first class if you need a crane for the job.  The best kind of lawn ornaments are found washed up on the beach, half buried in the outback, in a pile of industrial waste or are repurposed from a former life as a consumer item.  Someday I will learn to weld so I can make those statues that look like a helicopter crash.  In Senegal I saved all the metal I pulled out of flat tires with plans to make a statue out of it.  Sadly, the collection did not make it to this side of the ocean.

Before I left for South Asia Sept 1 My friends helped me drop a Bradford Pear tree in our front yard.  That event will one day make it to Adventures in Suburbia.  The trunk is over 14 inches in diameter.  When it was lying on the ground, I had a brilliant idea.  I left about 5 feet of the trunk intact lying in the front yard in order to make a lawn ornament out of it.  It is so heavy I couldn’t stand it in end, so I left it to dry.

I never got excited about chainsaw sculptors.  I once read “The Agony and the Ecstasy: a biographical novel of Michelangelo.”  I decided that a real artist carves marble with a hammer and chisel.   I don’t have any marble, but I can imagine that I am Michael Angelo when I start work on the sculpture.  Maybe we could have each visitor to our Congo Museum (Grand Opening May 2024) carve their name on it.   It has some cool knothole features that can be exploited artistically.

My problem is that the chairman of the board does not share my love for lawn ornaments. I will write about homeowner’s associations another time, but that is not an issue for us. The chairman’s concern is, “What will the neighbors think?” Our across the street neighbor has a plastic flamingo in his yard so I think that answers that question.  My plan is to move forward at a glacial speed so that whatever I do will look like it has always been there.  I don’t think we will try to carve the likeness of anything, just cut enough to accent the knot holes. Even if I don’t do much carving, the log standing on end will make a great place to put a pelican lawn ornament.