Damned immigrants

Mrs Walles and I have been travelling again, and I haven't had time to update the blog much.  Fortunately, though, all this gadding about has given me plenty of material for future posts.  Today just a brief entry, but one that packs quite a punch if you ask me.

In many US states, including Pennsylvania, only the back of a car carries a number plate, leaving the front free for something else like an affiliation or a humorous bumper-sticker style message.  Like this one which we spotted recently.

"WELCOME TO AMERICA NOW EITHER SPEAK ENGLISH OR LEAVE".  How pleasant.

Good thing I speak something that passes for English here.  Although the kind of person who puts that on the front of their car for all to see may have more stringent standards of English than the average American.  I'd better watch who I talk to...

Garden decor

Last time I left off with a teaser about what people put in their gardens instead of plants, and now I'm feeling a bit sheepish because I'm short of photos to illustrate just what I mean.  Possibly this is because I'm too busy taking it all in when I come across a good specimen to snap a picture, and possibly because when I see something I want to document I'm worried that the owner might view my photographic interest with displeasure, and express that displeasure through the medium of bad language or firearms.

Anyway, whatever the reason I don't have a lot to show, but needless to say that googling for "yard decoration" will turn up plenty of examples.  You've got your gnomes and other statuary, of course, your fake flowers, your wind chimes, your little windmills and so on, which are familiar from New Zealand.  There is a lot of seasonal decoration too (inside and out).  Imagine the kind of thing that people around the world do for Christmas and multiply it by all the varied public holidays.  At the moment Easter is the theme, before that it was St Patrick's day.  First shamrocks, now bunnies.

I've got no problem with this on the whole, it's not unfamiliar even if quite a few people take it over the top.  But there are some elements which aren't so familiar.  Like the flags.

I don't mean Old Glory, though I do have plenty of examples of the stars and stripes flying outside homes. Here.

And here.

And here.  Handy if you forget which country you're in.

No, I'm talking about garden flags.  Mrs Walles and I have one, everyone does.  Some people have more than one.  They're little flags that hang down from a metal frame you stick in the ground (the middle US flag up there is really an overgrown garden flag, to give you the idea).  You can get them in all kinds of patterns, typically they are seasonal, so as you can imagine bunnies and chicks are common at the moment.  I think they're rather sweet, and I didn't suspect their existence before I came here.

Of course some people kill two birds with one stone, and fly a stars and stripes garden flag, especially around the patriotic holidays.  Now if only they made them with the design of the New Zealand flag, I'd be able to ruffle a few feathers around here...