A gnome comes home
I was pleased to see that a garden gnome taken from its home 17 months ago has been returned home -- with a fat package of photos showing places it visted around the world. Just as in the movie Am茅lie聽and the .
I'm not sure why I like gnomes so much. I'm generally very picky about garden ornaments. Maybe it's the years I lived in Germany (before gnomes became mass-produced in China). Whatever the reason, they make me smile.
The history of these characters, which are considered Teutonic versions of leprachauns, is a bit murky. They are considered close to the environment, which is, I guess, why they end up in the garden. They either appeared in the early 1800s, , or in . We tend to see mostly the cheap ones, but there are .
There are "gnome liberation" in . But the most is stealing a gnome, leaving a note saying it has gone traveling, and then returning it with a record of its journey or sending postcards or notes and photos all along the way.
This occurred in England, where a 22-year-old recent college grad liberated a gnome and took it with him on a聽聽through聽 12 countries.
It's fun reading about it.聽I suspect that if gnomes were alive, they would enjoy seeing a little of world before returning home to聽be in charge of聽a smaller environment.
