This is the infamous House O’ Big Inflatables. The people that live here apparently subscribe to the More is Better mentality when it comes to cheap plastic crap and tasteless seasonal decor. This is a tiny image of the giant bunny inflatable they had up after Valentines Day. It stayed up for about a month and a half; all the way through Lent everything.

At Christmess, they had 11 (eleven) large inflatables. Last year, they had 10. The year before, they had 8 or 9. This is all on a normal sized front lawn. There’s very little lawn visible (or snow-covered front yard) during the holidays. The display casts an eerie glow – late at night, it can be a disturbing and soulless place to drive past.

After New Year’s this year, they took down the Christmessiest and somewhat religious inflatables (let’s call them “lawn blimps,” why don’t we?) and left up a couple of generic “Winter Holiday” ones.

Then Valentine’s Day was in the offing – there was some type of heart thing.

Easter came and went – the bunny was on the lawn from about February 15. After Easter, much to my outraged aesthetic sensibilities, a palm tree and a parrot appeared. I suppose this was to herald the coming sauna-like summer, but then we had a cold snap and a lot of rain. Sometime in early May, they finally took them down.

So far this month, there’s been bare lawn, which is nice since their grass hasn’t seen the light of day since… September, when all the Halloween crap appeared. In the fallow weeks between Halloween and Thanksgiving, a bright green faux-cactus sprouted; it was soon joined by the giant turkey in a Pilgrim hat. I guess it was a Christmess cactus, because it remained all through December.

The rest of the year, they display a handpainted flag on a wooden signboard with some sort of rah-rah “support our troops” theme (you can just see it). I feel like they’re reserving fire for the Fourth of July, as there’s nothing up for Memorial Day (yet). Maybe that’s too touchy a subject these days – but next year, there may well be an inflatable Troop to Support.

I’m expecting great things for Arbor Day, but have no idea what they’ll do for the dog days of August (oh, wait, maybe that’s when the cactus showed up last year).

I’ll try to get a picture of the Lawn O’ Inflatables at Christmess and post it. It’s really quite… something.

You know, I really do live in a nice neighborhood. Really. For a burbclave.

And for the record, the only decorations visible on the outside of the house might be luminarias on Christmas Eve – real, burning luminarias in brown paper sacks I’ve folded myself. Not those tacky nasty plastic ones. So there.