Look what's growing

Around the middle of last summer our garden had so few living things left that it narrowly avoided being downgraded from Garden to Collection of Nonliving Objects of Some Possible Interest. The lone tree had provided a handy place on which to lean and hang things as a distraction from the realization that there weren't many things growing, such as a ladder, buckets filled with stones and shells, laundry, etc. But now the tree, too, is gone, so this year we are forced to look for other alternatives for sprucing up the garden. 


Looking to other people's yards for inspiration, I could not help but notice a house I pass on the train that has 11 toilets on the front porch.


The 11 toilets are all neatly lined up, as if to provide extra facilities should those in the nearby train station prove inadequate during a sudden rush on the loo.


It is possible that 11 males with exceptionally poor personal care skills live in the house, and that one female also lives in the house, and she finally decided to banish them to the porch for their personal care routines.


Or perhaps the family is remodeling, and the woman of the house is having a difficult time deciding on just the right toilet for the master bathroom. "Definitely white," she thinks one day, but "definitely eggshell" another day. "Round -- no, oblong"; self-closing -- no, not self-closing." And perhaps the man of the house has not kept the receipts for all the toilets the woman wants and then doesn't want, and simply lines up the unwanted ones on the front porch.


The Hero feels that perhaps the owners of the home simply have really bad luck with toilets. Or that they are running a compassionate Home for Unwanted Cans, taking in abandoned strays with no questions asked.


There are seemingly no end to creative uses of toilets outside the bathroom.


In certain parts of the country, such as a particular house not too far from our house, extra toilets are a) placed on the porch with a scarecrow-like individual perched on it in a realistic manner for Halloween, alongside a statue of Jesus, and then b) never bothered to be taken down.


Sadly, I cannot compete with either of these yards. I must be content to remain among the Collection of Nonliving (But Not Yet Tacky) Objects of Interest.