A Bit of Silliness in the Garden

My husband and I stopped and shopped at Ocean State Job Lot on Tuesday after my lunch date with dear friends, just before the Arboretum visit. I'd looked at the sale brochure online before we went. 

There was a $5 coupon on some metal yard ornaments; I discovered I could buy a 37-inch metal green bird or pink flamingo (or several other choices) for just $7.99 each, instead of the original $12.99 they were marked as. The limit was 4 per family at the sale price.

Well, when I couldn't decide, the sales lady encouraged me to get them both. And that seemed a splendid idea, and so I did. This is how a green bird and a pink flamingo ended up in Barb's butterfly garden/Ellen's bulb garden.

My husband had also picked up a jar of very nice pickles. Full actual pickles, not slices or chips or spears. The checkout lady cooed over and admired my husband's firm pickles, as she rang us up. Then she regaled us with a tale of pickle woe: she had purchased a jar of pickles at a local grocery store, got them home, tried them, and found them mushy.

"Well, that wasn't MY FIRST PICKLE RODEO!" she said with a snort. She took those bad pickles right back to where she got them and demanded her money back. No way was she going to be taken to the cleaners over a jar of sub-par pickles.

When we made it to the parking lot with our purchases, my husband and I couldn't stop laughing. "This isn't my first pickle rodeo!" I shouted at him, as I carefully placed the jar of pickles in a safe spot in the trunk for transport. And we laughed some more. What can I say? We're easily amused.

When I got home, I discovered that "some assembly is required" was part of the deal. Each metal ornament came in a plastic bag, in several pieces. You know. Place Tab A into Slot B. Screws, attached to the frame, were easy to turn with mere fingers. In a few minutes, we had a green bird and a pink flamingo, waiting to be installed in my little garden.

Now, these items are sold as "bird feeders," and so it is that the body of each one is rounded and an inch or two deep, to hold bird food. I don't intend to do that, as my husband runs the bird feeders, already installed on the other side of the yard. But I do hope these shallow spaces will collect rain water, for the birds and bees and butterflies to use.

After I placed them in the garden, which simply consisted of pushing the metal leg down into the dirt, I went back up inside the house and looked down. They were somehow obscuring each other, so I came back out and adjusted their locations. So here is a picture of how things ended up. The two new metal yard ornaments are in the garden, and the pink flamingos seem to be giving them a happy welcome.

This garden is for my big sister Barb, and for my friend Ellen. Both of them had a decent sense of humor, and I hope they are getting a bit of a laugh out of all of this. I like to keep my guardian angels amused. If not, what's life for?

My soundtrack song is the Hooters, with Heaven Laughs.

And heaven laughs when we say good-bye 
It ain't so far to the other side 
Someday soon we will meet again 
Say it over and over and over 'til then