No, I'm not talking about a miraculously early root vegetable crop.
Yes, this is the same neighbor I've written about before. They are the ones who had yard sale refuse on their yard for a month or so last summer. They had massive blow-up Hallowe'en decorations on the yard last fall. And, beginning in November, they started putting up Christmas decorations.
They started with an 8-foot tall snowman. It was a tall, skinny-ish style, fairly innocuous, the blow-up kind that's lighted from the inside. It wasn't exactly the style of the rest of the neighborhood, but it wasn't bad.
They added a 3-foot wide pale-blue lighted snowflake near the front door. That wasn't bad, either, and the faint blue light was kind of nice.
They added little walkway lights - candycanes... snowflakes... trees. Cute enough, although with the other stuff it was beginning to be a bit much. And as they flashed and twinkled in the dark, they were kind of... well... Let's just say I'm glad we close the blinds at night.
As the snow started to pile up, the walkway lights disappeared under the snow - all except for the faint flashing of the lights. The snowflake on the wall stood out a little more as the mildly-rundown appearance of the yard was masked by the blanket of white. And the snowman just stood there, happily waving. Until... well...
In about mid-December, something obviously happened to the snowman. One of his tethers must have broken, and he started tilting backward. It was just a little tilt at first. By around the beginning of January, snow was starting to attach itself to his side and he became a happily-waving listing snowman. A few weeks later, he was leaning backward, one arm above his head for balance as he danced in a perpetual limbo contest.
For a few days in mid-February, the snowman was flat on his back, covered in a good six inches of snow with his carrot nose pointing to the sky. Still inflated. Still lighted from the inside. Just not so vertical.
He sprung back up a week or so ago. Took a few days to get totally vertical, but he was patient and, by last weekend, was waving at passersby once again. And then, after a day last weekend when the tenants were outside clearing the sidewalks (for what may have been the first time all year), he disappeared.
Today I looked out and noticed a slightly-deflated carrot nose sticking up in the yard. The rest of the snowman out of sight in the yard.
Who knows? Maybe with the first gust of winter air next year he'll be back. (Although... if he wanted to leave all the rest of the kitsch behind, I don't know that we'd mind.)
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