How Funky Is Your Chicken, Part 2

I just stepped in from a walk around the neighborhood, and I can’t help taking a few minutes away from arranging stuff in the house to throw up more photos of what friendly folks have in their yards.

On the corner of our street is a bunch of beer cans and bottles on the ground, and I thought at first, “Every street has someone who parties a lot and liters, right?” Until I looked closely.

I zoomed in to show you the sign, but imagine cans and bottles all around. It’s part art, part word puzzle. Can you help me figure out the pun? If this helps, the bottles and cans are all local craft beer.

A few non-political yard signs, depending on how you look at them.

This sign is on the side of a building that says it’s a maker’s space, by membership only. I’d love to know if they have many flying squirrels as members (or is that a bat?).

A couple of small guys.

For Susan who loves her yard rooster.

Random dude waving from a front porch. Most front porches here have been transformed in some way, with screens, or windows, or entirely into new rooms of the house. Ours was screened-in back when Google Maps first began logging its historic footage from StreetView.

I kept coming back to these flamingos and knew I’d been there before.

Rather gear-ish flowers in this yard.

Again, I’m skipping the plain-Jane little free libraries, but here are a couple more that stand out.

The pink one lived as a newspaper cart a while back, and the other has painted on it,

“Take a treasure, leave a treasure. Enjoy today and all its pleasures.”

I had no treasure on me, but I hope I remember to have one in my pocket the next time I walk by.

The following aren’t yard decorations, but they’re evidence of neighborhood weirdness on their own. My last car was a compact Prius, called a PriusC, and only a few were sold in Maryland where I lived when I owned it. It was a thrill to see another on the road. Apparently, Madison is the real market; I keep seeing them everywhere. To prove my point, I took these photos on my short walk today, within about ten minutes of the house.

I owned a black one, which I see around elsewhere, plus I see a dark grey one. Good God, how strange that feels to see my car everywhere, and to no longer own it. Right before we hit the road, when the pandemic hit, I sold it to my boss for him to give to his daughter.

Why, merci.

This light makes this one different each time I walk by it.

As well as this one.

Turn I turned the corner.

Not yard art exactly, but I had to sneak this one in.

I like this one, especially.

From the side, this looks like a moose with elk antlers, who has seen better days.

Those herons need to hurry it up; the robots are gaining on them in a dangerous way.

Okay.

I wasn’t going to post political signs, but seems like politics is life now more than ever. The bottom sign says it all for this neighborhood:

“Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

“All theory […] is gray. But the golden tree of life springs ever green.” From Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a thinker (and everything else) from Germany in the late 1700s. I always thought of him simply as Goethe, father of the Bildungsroman, kind of a fictional autobiography showing how hardship builds character (in young white men). I quoted him a bunch in my master’s thesis. I didn’t realize he was such the dude for other reasons. Learn something new on every walk.

Thanks for coming along with me for this walk in my neighborhood! If you missed the ten-minute walk in the other direction, here it is.