|
If my inner child had a physical manifestation, it would be a garden gnome holding a small wheelbarrow, shovel at the ready.
I don't have a garden gnome (my daughter won't let me), but I love what they represent: a good-natured world where we and nature are in perfect balance, a utopian society much like the one the Smurfs brought to television in the 1980s.
When I was growing up, gnomes were the nerds of the garden world. Now they are serious business. Gnomes are not to be snickered at. Heck, have you priced them lately? Anywhere from $30 for a 3-inch gnome to $230 for a little fella less than 2 feet tall.
A recent Gnome Festival at Hollyhocks Garden Essentials on Southeast Belmont Street found homes for 15 gnomes in one day. But these weren't just any gnomes -- today's most popular supermodel gnomes have names such as Winklewisp and PorthKerry and are lovely vintage reproductions of 17th, 18th and 19th century antiques sculpted by Welsh artist Candice Kimmel.
The Kimmel gnomes are made in South Dakota, each one painstakingly hand-painted.
Sure, gnomes still carry a negative stigma, but they're fighting back. In fact, the infamous Gnome Liberation Front pops up wherever gnomes are being "exploited." Some sleuthing of police blotters worldwide shows that the GLF has a checkered past:
Dateline: northern France, 1997: GLF's ringleader is given a "suspended prison sentence and fined for his part in the disappearance of about 150 gnomes."
Fearing for their safety, the members of the subversive GLF go underground.
Dateline: eastern France, 1998: CNN reports a mass suicide of gnomes; 11 are found hanging by their necks under a bridge with this note: "When you read these few words we will no longer be part of your selfish world, where we serve merely as pretty decoration."
But the GLF's warning still was not heeded.
Dateline: Paris, 2000: CNN reports that the GLF has stolen close to 20 wee ones during a nighttime raid on a Paris exhibit. The groups warn that more will be kidnapped unless gnomes are "released into their natural habitat." Exhibit organizers, however, do not "bow to the Front's demands."
By this time, 6,500 gnomes have been stolen and relocated to forests and lakes.
Dateline: Saint-Die-des-Vosges, France, 2001: Priests find 84 stolen gnomes waiting for Mass outside a cathedral in eastern France. A sign above them reads "Free at last!"
Dateline: Paris, 2003: Some 40 "freed" gnomes are condemned to life on the shelf of a dusty cupboard when police chief Michel Klein can't find their owners.
It happens here, too, although I suspect the GLF is an ad hoc, ragtag mob that strikes out of convenience rather than necessity.
Southeast Portland resident Holly Hood says she keeps her gnome, Hollyhock, up close to her house so no one can steal him "and he can't walk away." After all, there are recorded cases of garden gnomes traveling all over the world before finding their way back home.
It's my theory that although disgruntled at times, gnomes do suffer from separation anxiety. So it's important to leave them alone and let them make roots in your neighbor's yard, if need be. Even if you suspect they'd be happier elsewhere.
Whether you have a home for a gnome is entirely up to you. Just remember, gnomes are now coveted creatures with a secret life all their own.
|
