A Bench & A Half Man!

A bit of fun in the garden...

Good grief, the first time I saw it, I pictured myself in a Miss Marple mystery. A proverbial village who-done-it. It gave me quite a turn to be honest. Who would expect it after all. Frankly, there should be a warning sign for the faint of heart or the pace maker brigade.

It is rather an eye catcher and hats off to our First Lady Of Deutsch-Schützen, who was the first
( at least I think so ) to cut a man to size. I must say, she has got style and pizzaz enough to carry it off and in such plain sight as well. Small villages lend themselves to beautiful gardens. At least the front and visible part of it. Everyone knows who lives where and who does what...or not... in regards to gardening.

Luckily our house has a very overgrown hedge - a perfect ruse to not garden behind it. The front verge gets a haircut every few weeks and voila, we at least look partly neat. Remember, unlike almost everyone else in our village, gardening does not come naturally to Bob and I. Back in South Africa, we thought of ourselves as ace gardeners if our sole pot - plant ( geraniums! ) survived a month after coming to live with us.

Of course, in our first year here, Bob was extremely overenthusiastic and in one foul swoop, chopped down the hedge. Frankly, this did cause a mini-marital tiff and considering that all Winter long we were on display ( our whole yard and garden to be spied upon ) and seen, many a wife would have also thrown their toys out the cot / conversed in a higher octave from the usual. Oh you better believe it, I held the shrillness for a few minutes. So far so good and the hedge lives on...

As with all things stylish and " unique ", the idea gets replicated. Walking on Sunday morning in Eisenberg, I again almost had heart failure. Gosh, they do know how to display the cut to size dummy at such an optimum angle, that one only knows at the last minute that it isn't real.

Should more villagers jump on the band wagon and display their perfectly chopped men, a tour could be arranged or even better yet, a competition of who best cut their man down to size...And of course it is a perfect opportunity to recycle old pants. Beware Bob, your Camo-pants might disappear from the cupboard!

This is the Deutsch-Schützen cut to size man...

The Eisenberg variety. To be honest, I don't know whose dummy was there first and for all I know there are more dummies about!

Biggi