What Not To Wear - Garden Edition, and Farewell Ash Trees

I know I was complaining about the gnomes at work...but it can get worse. There are some pretty questionable ideas about garden decoration in this area that I kind of wanted to share. (I will apologize if these happen to belong to anyone reading this...)

Don't know if I mentioned before, but my neighbours managed to acquire light-up flamingos and tulips. Yeah.

Down the road a piece, one also finds the following:

A random tiny toadstool, about to dive off a rock.

A collection of garden statuary that looks to be the outdoor equivalent of dollar-store kitsch figurines.

And a polar bear in the middle of a yard where all the plants grow in concrete-edged circles...

Sometimes I feel like an intervention might be in order.

I took pictures of the ash trees lining my street. This is probably their last week.

Probably they've been there as long as the buildings here have. But they've been doing badly - only a few branches are leafing out this year, and what with the emerald ash borer beetle around, they've been marked for removal.

The other side of the street is already cut, and looks bare.

I'll miss the classic canopy overhead - it'll take years before the replacement trees get big enough to look shady and substantial.