Cats, fairies and flying gnomes

For some reason I love fairies and cat statues. I've started to collect them along the front walkway.

The cat thing is obvious because we live with three of them. Rub the Buddha Kitty's tummy for luck:

The fairy thing is a little more complex. I don't like the image of a flighty overly-pious "angel" sprinkling pixie dust ad nauseum. To me, fairies are light and whimsical yet mischevious. Beautiful but saucy. I am very picky about the fairies I let into my garden.

This globe is solar powered:



These bubbles are actually plastic:

One day I would like to make a fairy garden similiar to this.

No gnomes have moved into the garden yet. I'm waiting to find the right one. My favorite Harry Potter gnome scenes:

Fred, George, Harry and Ron were the only ones who knew that the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for Christmas dinner. Stupefied, painted gold, stuffed into a miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it glowered down at them, the ugliest angel Harry had ever seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy feet. --From The Half Blood Prince, 2005

"Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn.

"Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods...."

There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. "This is a gnome," he said grimly.

"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" squealed the gnome.

It was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. Ron held it at arms' length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down.

"This is what you have to do," he said. He raised the gnome above his head ("Gerroff me!") and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry's face, Ron added, "It doesn't hurt them -- you've just got to make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnomeholes."

He let go of the gnome's ankles: It flew twenty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge.

"Pitiful," said Fred. "I bet I can get mine beyond that stump."

Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge, but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry's finger and he had a hard time shaking it off -- until --

"Wow, Harry -- that must've been fifty feet...."

The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

"See, they're not too bright," said George, seizing five or six gnomes at once. "The moment they know the de-gnoming's going on they storm up to have a look. You'd think they'd have learned by now just to stay put."

Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.

"They'll be back," said Ron as they watched the gnomes disappear into the hedge on the other side of the field. "They love it here....Dad's too soft with them; he thinks they're funny...." -- from The Chamber of Secrets, 1999

J.K. Rowling, you're my hero.