This year J went all-out decorating our yard for Halloween, ordering a brimming box of tombstones, skeletons, zombie hands and other spooky accoutrements to transform our otherwise normal suburban yard into somewhere scary.
As I mentioned last year, Halloween decorations are very popular in our neighborhood, and over the past few years there’s been a gradual upsurge in tombstones, ghosts, and witches as more and more of our neighbors have gotten into the habit of creeping out their yards for Halloween.
My favorite yard decorations are the so-called ground-breakers: skeletons who are in the process of rising up out of their tombs. Skeletons are intrinsically fascinating: we all have them, but we don’t normally see them. I like the idea of spending one holiday a year pretending our otherwise normal yards are haunted with history: not just skeletons in our closets, but old bones and forgotten souls underfoot at every step.
When J moved into this house, he found a tombstone for a previous resident’s pet goldfish, so who knows what other bones were buried long before there were houses much less a suburb here. Isn’t every inch of earth haunted with some sort of story, some sort of history, or some silent assortment of souls?
This is my Day One contribution to NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, a commitment to post every day during the month of November: thirty days, thirty posts.
Hoarded Ordinaries 