Flâneur Gardening

For those of you who are of a Halloween disposition, I bring you the scariest pictures from my image library…

We start off with some rather capricious spirit guides, the tupilaqs I bought in Greenland back in 2008 when I went hiking around Nuuk for two weeks. (An outdoorsy take on being a flâneur, I guess, meandering about in solitude on the fells around Nuuk…)

Wikipedia calls tupilaqs “avenging monsters”, but my tupilaqs are definitely just examples of folk art, created as souvenirs for tourists. I love the one above, though; she’s clearly connected with abundance; fertility, good hunting of both seals and birds, and in that respect I think she translates easily into a gardening context.

The next one is more decidedly moster-ish; a lizard-like diamond-patterned skin, large claws and an open mouth. The impression, though, is softened by the soft tones of pink and green that comes out of this reindeer antler having been left to rot somewhat. The rot produces this lovely pastel colour spectrum in the bone, and the contrast between the sharpness of the diamond pattern and the polished surfaces makes this an absolute treat to handle.

And now… Now comes the scary part… Mommy dearest!

I love this picture of my Mum as a witch… It goes a long way in showing her personality. She works in a kindergarten, and the picture was taken an early morning when she had gotten dressed for work, complete with blackened teeth and my Dad’s walking stick (which he made himself).

She had dressed up for Fastelavn celebrations in the kindergarten, in Denmark this is the dress-up holiday of the year for kids, rather like Halloween in the North Americas, and my Mum loves to dress up… She doesn’t do stereotypes, though, so rather than going with the pointy hat and the broom-stick she obviously dressed as a witch from the folk tales.

The picture was taken quite a few years ago, but I still use it as an example of what kind of upbringing I had. Whenever people think I’m a bit strange or odd I can just show them this photo of my Mum and they will go “Ahh… I see…”!

However, to finish off on a more traditional Halloween note, have some (store-bought) pumpkins!