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When the definition of Kitsch is limited to Tacky, regardless of price, there is no better place to display your poor taste than in your own yard. Some folk call their expensive purchased junk, artwork. Welded together car bumpers and plumbing parts sprinkled with a hub cap and tire iron. And we all pass by and scream YAK. Somewhat upscale from that are flame cut sheet steel objects, bent and twisted into almost recognizable shapes. Or concrete subjects in abstracts forms, filling the yards in artistic cities like Madison, Wisconsin or the East side of Milwaukee and surely in your own area. Today I passed by the rear end of an old finned Caddy, sticking up from the ground as if run into a giant pothole, right in the middle of a front yard in a newly rediscovered, older neighborhood. Over the years we have laughed at many Kitschy fads for the yard, trolls and mushrooms, cut outs of cowboys, dogs and bent over gals. Cement everything from peeing boy fountains, flowerpots, animals, and especially deer, lots of deer. Wooden plaques of bunnies, flowers, sheep and little girls with sprinkling cans. Plastic flowers in a garden, and even one with plastic evergreens all in a row. Now we all probably have some or at least one of these objects of Kitsch in our yard. We have a friend in a gazillion dollar house with a Moose cutout at full size in her backyard, and do we dare point out the tackiness of it? No! And another friend with a frog that croaks when approached. But that one is our fault, we placed it in their yard one night. We have all passed a nice display in tasteful Kitsch and marveled at its artistic value, but at what point does one go from tasteful décor to down right tacky? I think I may have reached that point. Well how could it happen, does one intentionally decide to become a garden Kitsch addict? Is it the friend that urges you to - just try one, everybody else does it, what harm could it do. Oh Woe Is Me!! In this case study, it was my one fault. When we moved into our house, and decided to have a big party so everyone could see the place, I wrote up an invitation suggesting only tacky yard gifts would be acceptable. Oh me, what a mistake. Among the most notable, we received a painted concrete penguin with plastic bow tie, several birdhouses dressed up as other objects, a real tombstone, a concrete stepping stone, several wooden cut outs of flowers, and pink flamingos, one that anatomically corrected with two pink golf balls. (Trading tacky flamingos is another day’s story.) All items were placed in our yard to scare our new neighbors. But alas that is how it started, Oh we took down many of the objects, but “stored” the tombstone behind bushes, stepping stone in the garden and birdhouses hung in trees. All other objects were placed on rafters in the garage for re-gifting. Today! Well, let me mentally wander through the yard, and see if you agree we have reached the ultimate in Dictionary Defined Garden Kitschy. A five foot metal pole from the roof of an 1880s building with huge finial at top and an arrow to point the wind direction sits at the beginning of our driveway, a four inch square, three foot long hunk of red marble sticking up out of the ground, an iron gate is a trellis for tea roses, the stepping stone, the tombstone, a sundial, a single blade walk- behind farm plow, three bird bath bases with two holding colorful bowling balls (one red, one blue), and one with a huge round lathe turned wooden ball, are all in front. Then in back we have two fire hydrants; one is a Watrus of St. Paul, one corn planter, a dozen antique steel wheels of various sizes and designs, a drinking fountain as a bird bath, a cement pond made from a discarded Bradley Wash Fountain with added cement egret, the bird houses, two wind chimes, a dinner bell, two bird baths, another gazing ball - this one official, a granite pathway made from a headstone company’s scrap, a wooden sign pointing to the “Garden Path”, several small metal pieces from the ends of treadle sewing machine stands as wall art on the garage, and a Heron weathervane on our garage. And we now have a flamingo with clothing for each season and holiday. Not to mention two “ART” pieces, one is a glass top table with the base in the form of a sewer pipe, the other looks like the chaps of a bowlegged cowboy that we place a faux Roman statue head atop. There is the cement angel, several small gargoyles, and child’s heads, broken from statues. Did I leave out our three bird feeders, the pink marble slab made into a garden bench and our plastic kiddy fort under the evergreen trees. Now you judge, are we in need of treatment, would a 12-step plan put us on the right path or would we stray back to our old garden path ways? Should we get an exorcist in to pluck these demon objects from our yard or learn to live with them, promising never purchase another? Help us before my wife or I sin again. The Dean.
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