“abuzz.” In resounding agreement, the Garden Writers Association of America have awarded Garden Whimsy the coveted Quill and Trowel Award.
Good people of the Quill and Trowel, where have you been? Have you been blinded by your gazing balls? Did you miss the Golden Age of the Bent-Over Grandma? The plywood grandmas have dwindled now, but they are still to be found around these parts, their paint flaking, their plywood delaminating in the sun and rain, Grandma’s exposed polka-dot bloomers leached of color.
When they first appeared on the scene, the plywood grandmas were culturally divisive. Some social critics declared them trashy and demeaning, others found them a real knee-slapper. Whatever the take, they proliferated, and soon some joker designed a companion piece: a rearview of a grandpa in overalls, a red handkerchief out his back pocket and his hand planted firmly on grandma’s ample rear. Eventually, a third-generation piece appeared—a little plywood boy, taking a pee on a tree. We had achieved thematic apogee.
In New Auburn, as in any place, lawn art is a form of public display as simultaneously trite and revealing as bumper stickers and nose rings. Between the porch and the road, iconography sprouts: the bathtub Madonna, the milk-cow windmill, giant mushrooms carved from stumps, yellow Norwegian Crossing traffic signs—these images speak to who we are.
They do not always speak clearly. The most ubiquitous element of garden whimsy in western Wisconsin is the concrete deer lawn ornament. Why, in a state teeming with whitetails—in the autumn, their mangled and abraded bodies line the roads like organic brown speed bumps—we choose to buy three-quarter-sized concrete replicas by the herd and stick them in the front lawn to mow around, I do not know. I used to wonder the same thing about the proliferation of fiberglass lawn cows, but now that California has stolen our Dairyland thunder and family farms are rapidly becoming a historical footnote, the fake Holsteins have taken on a commemorative air. But the fake deer are a constant source of cultural cognitive dissonance. During hunting season, many of them are gussied up in blaze orange bunting. Real deer are not so blessed.
I admit the Pioneer Press piece left me dyspeptic. In celebrating garden whimsy in the form of giant steel dragonflies, gaggles of bronze crows, and faux ruins, the Quill and Trowel crowd are giving their cultural imprimatur to yard art of a gentrified sort. The inference is that our plywood and wrapped lawn mowers are tacky, but I have yet to see a teddy bear topiary in Chippewa County. Ditto “a scarecrow dressed up in bohemian duds including shawl and beret.” Faux ruins? Who needs ’em, when your backyard is arranged around two rusty Pintos and a washing machine sprouting crabgrass? Lyric beauty goes only so far. I could do without whirling plastic sunflowers, but more than that, I want to be in a place I understand. Fake deer and Packer ornaments, goofy mailboxes, they tell me I am in a place where—for better or worse—I know the code. Let me be the first to say “Grandma Bending Over” is no “Nude Descending a Staircase.” But when Garden Whimsy the book celebrates a formal Grecian statue dressed as a prom queen in tulle and chiffon, methinks a sight gag is a sight gag, marble and brass notwithstanding.
Truth be told, it was the subheadline that really hung me up: “At Last, Fertile Imaginations Are Appreciating a Little Whimsy in the Garden.” Implied: Fertile imaginations are only fertile if they work in brass and marble and eschew the coarse belly laugh. It’s tough to stick up for the worst of our lawn art—cartoony plastic Wal-Mart Garden Center frogs, for instance, although Garden Whimsy gives its seal of approval to giant frogs playing the cello ( bronze frogs, natch)—but something about the plywood cutouts kept ringing a little bell. There was vindication in there somewhere. Then, reading the
Good people of the Quill and Trowel, where have you been? Have you been blinded by your gazing balls? Did you miss the Golden Age of the Bent-Over Grandma? The plywood grandmas have dwindled now, but they are still to be found around these parts, their paint flaking, their plywood delaminating in the sun and rain, Grandma’s exposed polka-dot bloomers leached of color.
When they first appeared on the scene, the plywood grandmas were culturally divisive. Some social critics declared them trashy and demeaning, others found them a real knee-slapper. Whatever the take, they proliferated, and soon some joker designed a companion piece: a rearview of a grandpa in overalls, a red handkerchief out his back pocket and his hand planted firmly on grandma’s ample rear. Eventually, a third-generation piece appeared—a little plywood boy, taking a pee on a tree. We had achieved thematic apogee.
In New Auburn, as in any place, lawn art is a form of public display as simultaneously trite and revealing as bumper stickers and nose rings. Between the porch and the road, iconography sprouts: the bathtub Madonna, the milk-cow windmill, giant mushrooms carved from stumps, yellow Norwegian Crossing traffic signs—these images speak to who we are.
They do not always speak clearly. The most ubiquitous element of garden whimsy in western Wisconsin is the concrete deer lawn ornament. Why, in a state teeming with whitetails—in the autumn, their mangled and abraded bodies line the roads like organic brown speed bumps—we choose to buy three-quarter-sized concrete replicas by the herd and stick them in the front lawn to mow around, I do not know. I used to wonder the same thing about the proliferation of fiberglass lawn cows, but now that California has stolen our Dairyland thunder and family farms are rapidly becoming a historical footnote, the fake Holsteins have taken on a commemorative air. But the fake deer are a constant source of cultural cognitive dissonance. During hunting season, many of them are gussied up in blaze orange bunting. Real deer are not so blessed.
I admit the Pioneer Press piece left me dyspeptic. In celebrating garden whimsy in the form of giant steel dragonflies, gaggles of bronze crows, and faux ruins, the Quill and Trowel crowd are giving their cultural imprimatur to yard art of a gentrified sort. The inference is that our plywood and wrapped lawn mowers are tacky, but I have yet to see a teddy bear topiary in Chippewa County. Ditto “a scarecrow dressed up in bohemian duds including shawl and beret.” Faux ruins? Who needs ’em, when your backyard is arranged around two rusty Pintos and a washing machine sprouting crabgrass? Lyric beauty goes only so far. I could do without whirling plastic sunflowers, but more than that, I want to be in a place I understand. Fake deer and Packer ornaments, goofy mailboxes, they tell me I am in a place where—for better or worse—I know the code. Let me be the first to say “Grandma Bending Over” is no “Nude Descending a Staircase.” But when Garden Whimsy the book celebrates a formal Grecian statue dressed as a prom queen in tulle and chiffon, methinks a sight gag is a sight gag, marble and brass notwithstanding.
Truth be told, it was the subheadline that really hung me up: “At Last, Fertile Imaginations Are Appreciating a Little Whimsy in the Garden.” Implied: Fertile imaginations are only fertile if they work in brass and marble and eschew the coarse belly laugh. It’s tough to stick up for the worst of our lawn art—cartoony plastic Wal-Mart Garden Center frogs, for instance, although Garden Whimsy gives its seal of approval to giant frogs playing the cello ( bronze frogs, natch)—but something about the plywood cutouts kept ringing a little bell. There was vindication in there somewhere. Then, reading the
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