Figure 1 – Ornamental garden owls, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

For some reason I love to photograph garden ornaments. These tend to be little real animals, looking cute and adorable as well as totally fanciful creatures looking, well, fanciful. And I suspect that therein lies the profounder point. Our gardens are private places of refuge, and when we populate them with little whimsical creatures, we simply add to their wonder and our sense of oasis.

OK, we can go deeper. Figure 1 (an IPhone image) shows ornamental garden owls. Now, there are these plastic owls that people put on roofs so as to provide roosting places for pigeons And these animals, the ones in Figure 1, aren’t going to fool Boston pigeons, most of whom have spent some time at one of our institutions of higher learning. But the owls are cool. And they allude to Athene noctua, the little baby owl that accompanied and was a symbol of the goddess Athena in Greek Mythology. This is, of course, the source of the phrase “wise old owl.” Who? You know the one on the bag of Wise Potato Chips. Who? Well, you know, Winnie the Pooh’s companion, who observed that “You, sir, are stuck. A wedged bear in a great tightness. In a word, irremovable.”

Hmm, and as for the creature of Figure 2 (also an IPhone image), I have no idea what that is. All that I can think about is the 1977 children’s Disney movie: “Pete’s Dragon.” That dragon’s name was Elliot. And for fans a remake is currently being filmed in New Zealand.

Figure 2 – Garden creature, Pete’s dragon, Elliot? Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015