Garden: Winter Walk-Off, 2014

I'm jumping onboard the "Winter Walk-Off" meme hosted by Les at A Tidewater Gardener.  The idea is to walk or bike around your neighborhood photographing whatever is interesting to you, but taking no photos of your own garden.  A full set of Winter Walk-Off "rules" and links to others' posts can be found here.

This year, I decided to go with a "Bohemian Neighbors" theme.  First up is this home located a few blocks south of us.  It defies description, actually.  The homeowners must have been working for decades to create such a varied accretion of detail.  Magpies!  To me, it evokes part hobbit-house and part beach-shack. (I posted about it last year on FaceBook.)

Sidewalk view

Sidewalk adjacent.

Close-up of the mosaic on the rockery stones.

Another close-up of the amazing variety of items included in the mosaic.

I used to walk by this house quite frequently and I observed that the household includes at least 3 standard poodles.  I would have expected nothing less!

Next up, a mini lending library--so cute!

Lending library.

A few more blocks south and a couple of blocks east brings us to this property which has intrigued me ever since I first saw it:  

Home, fence, and arbor are painted turquoise and persimmon.  A glazed pottery menagerie decorates the rafter tails.

 A beautifully detailed and crafted lattice fence and arbor enclose the front of the property.  Handmade pottery animal tiles finish each of the rafter tails on the arbor.  Within the enclosed yard, you can see many seemingly unfinished (or maybe broken?) clay sculptures and busts.  It's fascinating and beautiful and you just KNOW that fabulously creative and interesting people live here. 

Close-up of the pottery animals.

Unfortunately, the property seems to be falling into disrepair. Since I've known it, it's always been overgrown and jungly--which was part of its allure (I thought)--but now the beautifully crafted fence and arbor are starting to fall apart and the plants really seem to be suffering.  I'm worried about that.  

Circling back towards home brings us past another charming miniature lending library:

Another lending library.  

  

Continuing north, you pass another home with bohemian spirit.  In the photo, it might be hard to see the mardi-gras beads adorning the small tree, but they're there--augmented by a constantly-changing assortment of other stuff as well.

Mardi-gras beads!

Seasonally decorated tiki dude. He used to live under the bead-tree with a whole assortment of flying pigs.

Heading north again, you'll spy this house.   It's not as over-the-top as the others, but you can tell that bohemian folks live there--and not just by the turquoise and coral paint job.  It's decorated with an assortment of prayer flags, buddha faces and a big Indian mask.  I would have taken more photos, but they have big, barky dogs so I moved on. I included this photo to document my belief that the bohemian set gravitates to a turquoise/teal/coral/vermillion paint palette.  It's pretty--I like it.

Another house with bohemian vibe sports turquoise and coral paint.

Now THIS house…

...this house is located at the end of my block.  It is painted purple (true crayola crayon, grape Kool-aid purple), crimson, and orange.  Before it was remodeled, it was painted purple, orange and kelly green.  We (all the other gossipy neighbors and I) were all atwitter with anticipation when it was remodeled.  Would they repaint?  What color would they choose?  And this is it.  Basically, they replaced the green with red.  In an odd way, I think it is a near miss.  If the red were scarlet (orange-based) instead of crimson (blue-based) I think it would have been OK.  Loud, but OK.  And then, if they'd accented it all with a fabulous, flame-colored garden pot and some dramatic plantings, I think most people would understand that they are artistic--not colorblind. As it is, popular vote leans towards colorblind.

And there they are--some of the "bohemian" stand-outs in our neighborhood.  No judgement (maybe a little…on that last one).  People can do what they want  with their own property.  I think it enlivens the neighborhood.

So what do you see when you hit the streets in your neighborhood?