When we moved to our military house two years ago, we purchased a hand-made barn star and hung it on our front porch. It looked pretty nifty and nobody else had them.
SOMEHOW a local store began selling barn stars in mass quantities, and soon there were lots of houses on our street and in the surrounding area sporting barn stars.
Copycats!
In order to punk our neighbors, we've decided to up the odds on our new house. We've purchased a HEX SIGN. I'm sure this will piss off some of our religious zealot neighbors (there's always a few on every block) because they will think of hex signs as "evil". This is a misunderstanding about hex signs: people think they are satanic or something because in German "hexe" means witch.
Yet... the Pennsylvania Dutch, who created the hex signs in the mid to later 19th century, were very devout Christians. Not satanic worshipers. Just farmers who wanted to decorate their Bibles, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and later (as the price of paint got cheaper) barns. They enjoyed using six-sided figures because of the symmetry involved and it is theorized that the word in German, "sechs" which means six, is where the word hex came from. Hence, hex sign.
No witches involved.
Still, I believe the hex signs are nice examples of early American folk art and I know I'm the first one to have a sign on my door. It represents prosperity, peace, and luck. Who wouldn't need a little of that in their lives?
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Sort of. "They" (aka base landscaper-monkeys) took the mound-o-clay away and leveled it to flat, bare dirt. I've been closely examining the patch for grass seed, but I don't think they seeded it. That would have been too much effort. I think I'll have to take yet ANOTHER trip to Lowe's this week so I can buy a bag of patch seed. *sigh* Things were a lot easier when we just had sand and cacti in our front yard!
Awwwww...I would have liked the grave, and the witches.
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