Tuesday, July 12, 2011

I Do Not Collect Frogs


Lawn ornament inventory at the mobile home park where I am staying in Maryland:

Sea captain at the helm
Cherub reading a book
Coy pot-bellied little girl grasping the sides of her skirt
Plastic pink flamingos and their up-town verdigris metal cousins
Little Dutch boy and little Dutch girl
Donkey pulling a cart
Plastic tulips
Light house
Windmill 
Big white geese
Mallards
Owls
Birdhouses and bird feeders and bird baths
Turtles
Frogs
Eastern looking goddess (not quan yin)
Family of skunks
Chipmunks 
Squirrels
Bunnies
Bears wearing floppy hats
Pigs
Gazing balls of all sizes and colors
Fairy holding a basket of flowers
Fairy holding a flower petal
Flower fairy lying on her stomach
Little farmer boy in big hat
Butterflies
Devout angel with hands folded in prayer
Pinwheels of all stripes
A variety of gnomes
Snow white and her dwarves (seems like mischief could ensue. I would be tempted to exchange a dwarf for a gnome every so often)
Wishing well
Basset hound
Puppies
Lion with flowing mane
Moose
Deer
Blessed Virgin
St. Francis
Cats

I've had a few lawn ornaments myself. I was partial to frogs. I think it started with a frog door bell. Then a seated frog with his "hands" over his heart that perched on a ledge near our front door for a while before I moved him to a large rock in the back yard. I also  indulged in a series of little metal frogs that sat on a stone in our pond. I think birds hunting for a local happy meal may have carried them away because they disappeared.
The large warty stone frog that sat in a cluster of reeds near the stream was like an enchanted creature out of a fairy tale. He was my favorite--or at least tied for favorite with the classical looking androgynous head whose skull was hollowed out to serve as a planter.
I think there may have been pool towel hooks with frog-shaped brackets. And I confess that I nabbed some old party favors of my daughters out of a drawer--colorful plastic frogs with brightly contrasting dots and moved those here and there on the patio. I left them all when I moved. Other people are enjoying them now...or not.
I had a large stone cicada outside the French doors of our dining room. A nod to Provence--a place I love. Left it.
There was a gazing ball for a while. I think it had an accident involving our rowdy pit bull. Which was okay because I didn't really like it. And I believe a blue glass pinwheel met a similar fate with our dogs Lola and Layla. 
I was into bird houses, too. A white church with a steeple and a classic red barn perched on a tall wall next to a six-foot farm style windmill formed an out-of-scale homage to the Midwest. I didn't take any of it when I left. I don't miss it. Well...maybe that warty frog. But remember, I do not collect frogs.

1 comment:

Elizabeth said...

I was partial to owls, myself. I feel smug that I had a collection about forty years BEFORE the likes of Anthropologie declared them cool. I even hooked a lovely rug of an owl.

I think you need a gnome for that trailer park. Do you want me to send you one?