How Funky Is Your Chicken?

I bet your goose ain’t near as loose as the ones in my neighborhood, either.

I’ve been walking to and from the public bus stop on my way between the apartment and the house (it’s a ten minute walk, tops), getting all this preliminary moving done. It’s given me a chance to appreciate the funkiness of the houses around me.

I knew the area was fabulously strange from going to neighborhood festivals this past fall after we bought the house, but, in the dead of winter now, all the loose goose show their true colors.

I won’t bother with a compilation of the political-minded yard signs, but believe me when I tell you they had my visiting Airstream friend Amy spinning her head, thinking this might be the place to settle down when her time comes. Now, she’s about as activist-minded as they come. Just imagine flags and signs and posters in windows galore. I hadn’t seen this one anywhere else, so I did snap a shot today.

Put my phone back in my pocket quickly, much to my embarrassment, when a very elderly guy walked out to get his mail.

The cornerstone of funky yard decorations on these city-ish lots is the little free library. Again, I didn’t bother trying to snap each one on this ten-minute route, but a few stand out.

This one has hand sanitizer attached like a pen to a shelf at the DMV. Because: public health!

This one is all children’s books.

It’s down low so all the kids in a group can look inside.

This one exemplifies the earnest progressiveness all around. I mean, really. “No library is free … until we are all free.” Nothing here indicates self-aware mockery. Not even the homemade VHS tapes inside, badly labeled. I guess it’s a mystery VHS tape library?

This is my favorite, which is handy seeing as how it’s next door to my new house. Even a free market can get saturated, so these folks offer up a puzzle box in place of a free library. Nothing but puzzles inside, for all ages. Working on one myself right now.

I’m serious, I took these on today’s walk to the bus, in just ten minutes. If I’d gone done another additional block, I’d have added half as many weird things.

I love that there must be a story to each item.

It’s a fairly mixed neighborhood socio-economically.

Some houses have been turned into multi-unit rentals, while some look really nice and some haven’t been maintained.

Ours has been it all!

With winter in full force, I’ve been unearthing items from the “forest” at the back of the lot and finding increasingly interesting stuff.

The mini pond is still there, so I crack the ice as often as I can for the birds and rabbits. Although, I wish the rabbits would vamoose because Banjo will kill them when she moves in.

This geode is the size of my head.

I found this mystery item mostly buried. The putty that the rocks were placed in started cracking so I put it back right away. Tracy suggests a pet’s ashes, which fits the size and child-like art. What a story.

I’ll keep you updated about other funky stuff I find in the neighborhood (and on my lot) as we move in next week!

Can’t wait to start adding my own loose goose to the mix.