Frankenstorm is coming!

Trick or Treat!!

Last year, Halloween came and went while those of us who live in New England were without power for a week under two feet of snow.

This year, we put up our spooky decorations early only to hear that now, Hurricane Sandy is heading our way... for Halloween.

Crap.

So, as we're all taking down anything that can fly away, the Bear put on his costume.  I thought this was a wildly optimistic move on his part until I saw this:

 Smart Ass Bear

Now I see that this is an editorial statement.

Take that, Sandy. 

Bear Nekkid Bird Sanctuary

SF Homes in Wooded Setting

When I was a new bride, I was a collector. For some reason, I felt compelled to accumulate groups of things - handcrafted things like birdhouses and hand-thrown pottery. Pretty things but not particularly useful and a pain in the ass to keep free of dust. Luckily, I have the attention span of gnat so these collections never grew to the hundreds or thousands, just enough (I thought) to make a statement.

Until recently, the birdhouses were displayed above my kitchen cabinets. Since Sparky retired, we've been doing a lot of work on the house and the yard and I've been in this "Re-use, Recycle or Dump" mode. In my zeal to de-clutter the house as we renovate,  some items have migrated outdoors.

The shade gardens in front of the house needed... something.

As you know, we New Englanders love us some yard ornaments. Yes indeedy, we do.

So rather than go the way of flamingos and Mary-on-the-halfshell, I decided to relocate the birdhouses outdoors.  We mounted the houses on some beautiful old weathered fence posts and I have to admit, I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.

Bird Condos -  Great Amenities, Low HOA Fees

Now, I didn't actually expect birds to use these since they're placed so close to the house.  My thought was that they would be purely decorative. The birds, however, had other ideas. Someone is currently renovating this Bait Shack directly in front of my Living Room window.

Cozy Single Family - Under Renovation

I came home one day last week and found a Chickadee about to enter the birdhouse with a bright blue string clutched in her beak.  Since I love to decorate, I decided to help her with the reno project. I pulled out my knitting bag and tied scraps of bright purple and blue yarn to various trees in the yard.

Apparently, Mistress Mother Nature is pleased because the next day, I was gifted with this:

Another single perfect bloom

Although, someone else is NOT so happy because I found the corpse of a baby bird on the top rail of my garden fence.  I felt like the guy in The Godfather who found the horse's head in his bed. I suspect it's the Subterranean Pythons...

This is war.

Dragons, Gargoyles and Pink Flamingos...

Le Garden - en mulch

We seem to be slipping into a gardening frenzy here. The garden is all neatly fenced, raised beds full of tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans - red mulch on the outside, brown mulch on the insides. Blueberries are in pots on a bed of red mulch under a cage to keep the birds away.



Blooooooooberries!

Today, Sparky and I went mulch shopping and stopped in a garden shop full of concrete figurines. We "oohed" and "ahhhed" over the dogs, angels, lions and birds, dragons and gargoyles, the gazing balls and even some lawn jockeys (who knew they still sold those?) ... but then, we stopped ourselves.

Thank Goodness.

Here in New England, the addiction to lawn ornaments is an epidemic. It's a slippery slope from one cute concrete gnome to Mary-On-The-Halfshell and Pink Flamingos.

 Our house is surrounded by solar lights and (are you sensing a theme here? ) red mulch.  I'm thinking we can skip the chatchkes for now.

Although, there's room in the back yard for a Koi pond...

I think this trumps Santa

So Sunday night, Sparky and I were at Home Depot – because of course, we leave all home improvement projects to the last freakin minute…

I was coming off a two day cleaning/shopping/decorating frenzy. I was exhausted and on the verge of deliria, so as he trotted off to the lumber aisle I wandered into the Xmas department. I was mesmerized by all the shiny, sparkly stuff… most especially the ginormous inflatable snow globe with the sparkles flying around inside it… you can get lost staring into one of those. I know I was getting loopy because I was thinking this was just what my yard needed.

I stepped back to appreciate its gloriousness and bumped into this…
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


A manger. Complete with Joseph, Mary, the three Wise men and You-know-who. All of it inflatable.

Now, it’s been a while since I attended church on any kind of regular basis, but I’m pretty sure this falls under that Mortal Sin clause. There must be something in there about “Thou shalt not blow up (or deflate) the baby Jesus.”
 
There is something so wrong about this.
 
Wrong and yet...
 
AWESOME!