Really? More Garden Shit? YES MORE GARDEN SHIT

Remember a couple of years ago when miniature 'Fairy Gardens' were all the rage?  You'd find a little nook in your garden and put little miniature tables and chairs and whatnot in there and it would look super cute.  Generally, I do not do super cute, and particularly not in the garden.  Yeah, I have a few Tonka toys out there, but they're all rusty and shit.

Then I ran into the stump of an old Black Pussywillow that croaked in my back yard a couple of years ago, and it cracked off in such a way that it left a perfect little grotto.

I succumbed to temptation.  

 Behold the hidden grotto where tiny fairies can worship their golden god!

I have a bunch of little figurines from trophies hidden all over my garden.  This is Geoffrey, the god of victory and also the god of holding headgear made of laurel leaves aloft while looking buff.

Consider yourselves super lucky to have even seen this.  I had to army crawl through a poky bush and dirt and grass and shit to get these photos.  Isn't he shiny?  Maybe someday soon I'll catch a gathering of his worshippers doing him honor, or having a potluck or whatever they do.  That'll be cool.

Here is a rare sport of rosa 'Cinco de Mayo' - 'Cinco de Mayo Eyeballito'.  Note how bloodshot that eye is.  This rose knows how to party.

Here we see Beverly the Bowler taking aim at Simon the Salesman.  Their relationship is fraught with strife, but they just added a brand new gold John Deere tractor to their domestic melange, so let's hope for the best.  That shit ain't cheap.

All false modesty aside, I proudly display my TWO Silver Sow awards for Excellence in Farm Journalism right at the steps that lead to my front door.  One is a little less silver than the other because you don't just win that shit like pin the tail on the donkey, man.  The competition is FIERCE.

Old jacked-up gas pump?  We got one!  Fake vintage Pontiac sign?  We got one!  A metal home just made for infestation by hornets?  We got one!  Right next to our garage door!  Oh, and a Frau Halstrup rose in bloom.

The Bikers' shed with all the pagan luck.

My shed, encouraging sloth.  YES.  I have TWO SHEDS.  TWO SHEDS, PEOPLE.  TWO OF THEM.

Oh holy shit here's some whimsey.  It's an old 1950's rototiller I got for $5.00, because clearly I needed an old seized up rototiller.  And here it is, with the old half of my house showing.  

Wanna know why that attic hatch is so big? Serious as shit - it's so if someone died in the middle of the winter, they could get the body out of the house even if there were deep snowdrifts (and yes, they do get that deep here.)  Inside there in the attic is a lightning stick hanging from one of the rafters - that's a branch taken from a tree that was struck by lightning and nailed to the rafters of a house to keep future lightning strikes away, assumedly because it's already been that sticks' turn.  And the stick?  Was from a tree that stood at the North corner of our property and was hit by lightning and fell on the house and just caused all kinds of shit and kerfuffle; but that was in 1940 -  so whatever.

You'll probably never see another one of these.  The tree is a Camperdown Elm that I got as a seedling from a nearby property.  Now usually Camperdowns are grafted onto a scion of regular elm and let to cascade, because a Camperdown is a rare mutation of elm that has no gene for making a trunk - just a canopy.  I put eyebolts into the main branches as they grew and drew them upwards with turnbuckles until I had the form I wanted.  It was a bitch and it took fifteen years, but I have this lovely tree and it's amazing, zigzag structure, and it's an ornament all year round.

The stuff in front are tigerlilies that have yet to reach full height and blossom.  I think they look nice here just as a plant form.

Japanese Maples 'Golden Moon' and...red...maple thing.  An upright of cotynus 'Velvet Cloak' is trying to steal the spotlight left.

Things are happening fast out there!  Every day I've got something new waiting for me!  So while the garden is puttin' right along and doing fine, I'm painting my bathroom blue.  Because it was time.  There comes a time when that bathroom has to be painted blue, folks.  I'm doing it.  I'm doing it for AMERICA.