Thursday, April 10, 2008

Garden Gnome in the Bushes

When my sons were little, we lived on a ranch near a very small town in California. One cute neighborhood in the town, consisting of a dozen houses was fun to visit, because the gardeners had all gotten inspired to hide tiny figurines of garden gnomes and animals in their yards right near the sidewalk.

Everyone passing by, not only the kids, got a kick out of finding a plastic dinosaur or a red suited gnome peeking out from under a fern leaf or low lying pine branch. We found a few small animal figurines in unexpected places, like hiding hear a tree trunk or under a bird bath, and these always resulted in shouts of glee and laughter.

When we moved away, to a nearby larger city of 50,000 we discovered that the city hall had lovely heavily planted grounds and someone had nestled tiny plastic deer and other wild critters among the flowers and shrubs. This was unbelievably nice!
So now we had yet another venue for our adventure walks, looking for the unexpected among the roses and cantua vines.

This is a fun element to add to your garden, especially if children play in it.

4 comments:

Wandering Writer said...

I would love to find a troll. We have a little bridge over a dry creekbed in the backyard. I'd love to put him under that and tell my grandchildren the story of the three Billy Goats Gruff.

Terra said...

Karen, this is a super grandparent activity, and becomes a game of searching. Like you said, add in the story of the Billy Goats Gruff and voila, a fun afternoon.

TAILS of TANKENE said...

Terra- I have an old redwood stump that I plan on making into a hideaway for dinosaurs. Thanks for the great idea. My grandson Blake will love this new adventure with his Nona.

Barbee' said...

How delightful!