At present, we don’t have anything that whirls. If we did, it would have to be something authentically homemade by a local artisan, not something you can order from a catalogue. I’ve been looking at some products available online, at sites that ask you things like “Does Your Garden Have Personality?” and offer you “everything to make your garden fun, colorful, whimsical, silly, and beautiful…happiness is right outside your door!” For instance, “the ever-popular Gardener’s Tush.”

Okay. I’ve seen Gardener’s Tushes around. I think they’re tacky. If I’m stepping on somebody’s toes here, look: It’s a matter of taste. We may have some things in our yard that you wouldn’t want in yours.
In our garden we have a faded but still perky pair of bolt-upright two-legged rabbits, a boy and a girl, dressed in sort of Swiss outfits and holding decorated eggs. The girl rabbit is holding an armload (that’s why I say “two-legged”) of small eggs, and the boy rabbit is holding one big egg. Before we were living together, I left those rabbits, bought at a garage sale, in my wife’s garden as a courtship gesture.

We keep another item back among the cabbages, because it startles people. It’s a life-size plastic stricken-looking open-mouthed, tilted-back head of a man. A Christmas gift from my son, it was designed as a CPR training aid. I’m going to be frank with you: I have never gotten attached to that head. But you know how it is about a gift from one of your kids.

Or from your wife. Mine is a Northern artist. When we were driving through Mississippi, she saw bottle trees. When we got home, she made a bottle tree. A stiff-branched log, planted so it stands upright, with bottles stuck on its branches. At first I worried that this tree would make the neighbors wonder how much we were drinking, but no, they bring us antique bottles. We also have a tire in the yard. I am no artist, but I am Southern, and someday, as God is my witness, when I get around to it I will paint that tire white and plant something in it.

Because my wife and I travel so much, the only dog we have is a gray concrete Lab who sits down by the river, calmly watching for something to turn up worth barking at. He is cool with all our other ornamentation.