Gnome Garden Quotes

Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn. "Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, "like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods...

Xenophilius Lovegood," he said, extending a hand to Harry. "My daughter and I live over the hill, so kind of the Weasleys to invite us. I think you know my Luna?" he added to Ron. "Yes" said Ron. "Isn't she with you?" "She lingered in that charming little garden to say hello to the gnomes, such a glorious infestation! How few wizards realize just how much we can learn from the wise little gnomes — or, to give then their correct names, the Gernumbli gardensi." "Ours do know a lot of excellent swear words," said Ron, "but I think Fred and George taught them those.

I’m nobody’s sidekick,” Annabeth growled. “And, Percy, his accent sounds familiar because he sounds like his mother. We killed her in New Jersey.” Percy frowned. “I’m pretty sure that accent isn’t New Jersey. Who’s his—? Oh.” It all fell into place. Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium—the lair of Medusa. She’d talked with that same accent, at least until Percy had cut off her head. “Medusa is your mom?” he asked. “Dude, that sucks for you.

I'd just met a talking garden gnome and the nightmare version of My Little Pony.

I hate this idea that boys are thinking about sex nonstop and girls are thinking about - what? Stationery and garden gnomes? No.

The drab brown front of the house made it look as if it had been built from rusty spare parts. Someone always put lace curtains in the windows of dreary houses, and Nick was unsurprised to see the curtains making their attempts in every window of this place. There was a china garden gnome on the doorstep, wearing a desperate, crazy smile. "It's not so bad," Alan said. "You never take me nice places anymore, baby." said Nick, and was mildly gratified by Alan's ring of laughter, like a living bell that had been caught by surprise when it was struck.

You have the emotional capacity of a garden gnome.

Fred, George, Harry, and Ron were the only ones who knew that the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for Christmas dinner. Stupefied, painted gold, stuffed into a miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it glowered down at them all, the ugliest angel Harry had ever seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy feet.

You really shouldn’t drink potions if you don’t know what they do. - Aunt Polly

Call them what you want. Garden gnomes. Lawn ornaments. Little evil outdoor statuary hell-bent on world domination. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that, right now, they're hiding in plain sight, pretending to be symbols of merriment and good will.

Petulia's expression didn't change for a while. Then she said: 'So it WAS a fairy, then?' 'Well, yes. Technically.' The round pink face smiled. 'Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know...having a wee up against one of Miss Level's garden gnomes?' 'DEFINITELY a Feegle,' said Tiffany.

It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.

I work with funny and cute gossipy filmmakers, that are smart and nice like little garden gnomes (tho not Jena, she's tall, lean and more like Glenda the Good Witch, tho in a more judgey way), and who NOTICE THINGS LIKE LOVE! So they can gossip about it when not working on their movie!

You must know, my loved one, that there are beings in the elements which almost appear like mortals, and which rarely allow themselves to become visible to your race. Wonderful salamanders glitter and sport in the flames; lean and malicious gnomes dwell deep within the earth; spirits, belonging to the air, wander through the forests; and a vast family of water spirits live in the lakes and streams and brooks. In resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky looks in with its sun and stars, these latter spirits find their beautiful abode; lofty trees of coral with blue and crimson fruits gleam in their gardens; they wander over the pure sand of the sea, and among lovely variegated shells, and amid all exquisite treasures of the old world, which the present is no longer worthy to enjoy; all these the floods have covered with their secret veils of silver, and the noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the loving waters which allure from them many a beautiful moss-flower and entwining cluster of sea grass. Those, however, who dwell there, are very fair and lovely to behold, and for the most part, are more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has been so fortunate as to surprise some tender mermaid, as she rose above the waters and sang. He would then tell afar of her beauty, and such wonderful beings have been given the name of Undines. You, however, are now actually beholding an Undine.

You are either a half-baked, baked, or burnt cookie. You decide, but you can't be all three in life. - Aunt Polly

Though I no longer believed that my father was a garden gnome,

Stone gnomes and angels filled the gardens, and it seemed that they were also sleeping, as though a witch had cast a spell on them.

Looking around, I felt a mad desire to go shopping for pink flamingo and garden gnome lawn ornaments. I could do a midnight visit, plant one of each in every yard.

Nothing is more expensive than a missing opportunity

Weasel... weasel... do you pleasle? The garden gnomes -- they wait for you.

Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium.

Lord Goth spent his time riding his hobby horse around the grounds and taking potshots at the garden ornaments with a blunderbuss. Before long he had acquired a reputation for being mad, bad and dangerous to gnomes.

HORKLUMP M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. H

Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know,” Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn. “Yeah, I’ve seen those things they think are gnomes,” said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, “like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods. . . .

Horklump M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. Horned Serpent M.O.M. Classification: XXXXX Several species of Horned Serpents exist globally: large specimens have been caught in the Far East, while ancient bestiaries suggest that they were once native to Western Europe, where they have been hunted to extinction by wizards in search of potion ingredients. The largest and most diverse group of Horned Serpents still in existence is to be found in North America, of which the most famous and highly prized has a jewel in its forehead, which is reputed to give the power of invisibility and flight. A legend exists concerning the founder of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Isolt Sayre, and a Horned Serpent. Sayre was reputed to be able to understand the serpent, which offered her shavings from its horn as the core of the first ever American-made wand. The Horned Serpent gives its name to one of the houses of Ilvermorny.

The houses reminded me of hopeful homely girls on a Friday night, hopping bars in spangly tops, packs of them where you assumed at least one might be pretty, but none were, and never would be. And here was Magda’s house, the ugliest girl with the most accessories, frantically piled on. The front yard was spiked with lawn ornaments: gnomes bouncing on wire legs, flamingos on springs, and ducks with plastic wings that circled when the wind blew. A forgotten cardboard Christmas reindeer sat soggy in the front garden, which was mostly mud, baby-fuzz patches of grass poking through intermittently.

MacKenzie started to look frightened and Valor looked like he was going to kill somebody if they didn't stop scaring his girlfriend. At the same time, Victor looked like he was ready to step in and take control of the situation. And if these suits decided to pull out some guns, I could see where they might end up as a set of life-sized garden gnomes.

Contents 1 • I Accidentally Vaporize My Maths Teacher 2 • Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death 3 • Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers 4 • My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting 5 • I Play Pinochle with a Horse 6 • I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom 7 • My Dinner Goes Up in Smoke 8 • We Capture a Flag 9 • I Am Offered a Quest 10 • I Ruin a Perfectly Good Bus 11 • We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium 12 • We Get Advice from a Poodle

Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here, you won’t mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will you? There’s still so much to do.” “No--I--of course not,” said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of subject. “Sweet of you,” she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery. From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley kept Harry, Ron, and Hermione so busy with preparations for the wedding that they hardly had any time to think. The kindest explanation of this behavior would have been that Mrs. Weasley wanted to distract them all from thoughts of Mad-Eye and the terrors of their recent journey. After two days of nonstop cutlery cleaning, of color-matching favors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming the garden and helping Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canapés, however, Harry started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed to keep him, Ron, and Hermione away from one another; he had not had a chance to speak to the two of them alone since the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing Ollivander. “I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting together and planning, she’ll be able to delay you leaving,” Ginny told Harry in an undertone, as they laid the table for dinner on the third night of his stay. “And then what does she think’s going to happen?” Harry muttered. “Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?

she wrote out an incident report. "Yes, Mr. Lemon. I agree. Those teenagers should not have positioned your garden gnomes like that. Yes. I do believe I've heard that is in the Kama Sutra. No, I don't know what page." She wheeled her chair over to one of the massive file cabinets and pulled out a yellow folder packed with paperwork. "Just tell Mrs. Lemon the gnomes were wrestling," she said, stuffing the report inside. "I'm sure there is a nonviolent solution, but I don't see how the mayor can help. Nevertheless, I'll put it on file immediately.

He got carried away as he developed his idea: 'The aesthetic quality of towns is essential. If, as has been said, every landscape is a frame of mind, then it is even more true of a townscape. The way the inhabitants think and feel corresponds to the town they live in. An analogous phenomenon can be observed in certain women who, during their pregnancy, surround themselves with harmonious objects, calm statues, bright gardens, delicate curios, so that their child-to-be, under their influence, will be beautiful. In the same way one cannot imagine a genius coming from other than a magnificent town. Goethe was born in Frankfurt, a noble city where the Main flows between venerable palaces, between walls where the ancient heart of Germany lives on. Hoffmann explains Nuremberg - his soul performs acrobatics on the gables like a gnome on the decorated face of an old German clock. In France there is Rouen, with its rich accumulation of architectural monuments, its. cathedral like an oasis of stone, which produced Corneille and then Flaubert, two pure geniuses shaking hands across the centuries. There is no doubt about it, beautiful towns make beautiful souls.

No man in the house described our situation. Of course, everyone has a father—or, as they would say nowadays, a sperm provider, fatherhood in the old sense of paternity having fallen into disrepute—and I had one, too, though at that date I wasn’t sure this father was still what you’d call “alive.” When I was four or five, my mother told me she’d changed him into the garden gnome that sat beside our front steps; he was happier that way, she said. As a garden gnome he didn’t need to do anything, such as mow the lawn—he was bad at it anyway—or make any decisions, a thing he hated. He could just enjoy the weather.

Sheryl Sandberg: “It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.”115 She couldn’t be more right. You will not be as successful as you could be if you only like what you do and don’t love it. Trite, perhaps, but true. Sheryl is also right in saying that combining passion and contribution is a luxury: not that it’s expensive, but just rare. It’s something that many people either can’t figure out (how many people truly know their passion at the outset of their careers?) or can’t afford (you may love whittling garden gnomes, but the world loves engineers and your spouse and children love a regular paycheck).

No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box

Good Mistake" Blood on your hands And your hands still roam But your secret is safe with the garden gnome Those marks on your neck never seem to fade Bring a marching band For the masquerade Oh lonely man You know you can A pocket knife Will serve you well Remember what you're good for There's much more to life Under the sun It's not what they can see Until it's done Your secret's safe with me Blow out the candles on your cake It's another year due with the same mistakes Blind like a bat When you hit that wall Now who's gonna come Who you gonna call Oh lonely man You know you can A pocket knife Will serve you well Remember what you're good for There's much more to life Under the sun It's not what they can see Until it's done Your secret's safe with me I can see you run I can see you're undone Shadow to the sun Shadow to the sun See a rule to break See another rule to make It's a good mistake Shadow next to none Broken bones in a walking man It's a trick to the eye It's a rubber band Don't let it go Let it fall a part It's a heavy load For a tender heart

Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know,” Harry told Ron as they crossed the lawn. “Yeah, I’ve seen those things they think are gnomes,” said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, “like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods. . . .” There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. “This is a gnome,” he said grimly. “Gerroff me! Gerroff me!” squealed the gnome. It was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. Ron held it at arm’s length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down. “This is what you have to do,” he said. He raised the gnome above his head (“Gerroff me!”) and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry’s face, Ron added, “It doesn’t hurt them — you’ve just got to make them really dizzy so they can’t find their way back to the gnomeholes.” He let go of the gnome’s ankles: It flew twenty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge. “Pitiful,” said Fred. “I bet I can get mine beyond that stump.” Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge, but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry’s finger and he had a hard job shaking it off — until — “Wow, Harry — that must’ve been fifty feet. . . .” The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

It never hurts to have an army of garden gnomes protecting your property.

Magic doesn’t work like that. You have to have intent and focus, but not think about it. - Aunt Polly

You can’t just bippity-bap with your dipple-stack. - Aunt Polly

I’m always where I’m supposed to be. - Aunt Polly

Shut your mouth, Florus, or the ghosts will get in. The disembodied are always looking to hitch a ride in the right vessel. - Aunt Polly

He’s like a half-baked cookie. - Aunt Polly

You’re going to de-gnome the garden for me; they’re getting completely out of hand again

Other available books

Your mother was a garden gnome!” The goblin screamed in a language Kelath didn’t understand and changed course, heading

my forehead and armpits are spritzing like a berserk watering can cursed by an angry garden gnome. I roll out to center stage and fiddle with the microphone,

It looks like some... giant evil garden gnome. When garden gnomes go bad.” “Gnomes have beards,” I said. “Maybe the ones without beards are evil. That's how you can tell.

Of course, neat and tidy Mindy can’t stand the lawn ornaments. Neither can Mom. Every time Dad brings a new one home, Mom threatens to toss it into the garbage.

Do her parents make a hundred meals a day for people who think of them as semi-human, a smiling Asian couple like a pair of garden gnomes?

Soon we began to collect a little group of odd people who would drink with us every cocktail hour. Brigitte, who was a 22-year-old German, very beautiful, could have been on the cover of Stern magazine. Her boyfriend Volker was one of the most beautiful men I'd ever met - people said he looked like James Hunt, the English racecar driver. He was like Billy Budd. He was from Germany and had been a cowboy in Wyoming. Then there was Elford Elliot from England, who had something to do with producing garden gnomes. He was tripping on acid all the time and going out to Delos, this little island off Mykonos, chipping little pieces off the ancient ruins, which he then brought back in the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then there was Bryan, an IBM operator from Australia, who fancied himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure. I don't know why. The only story of his I remember was about some Australians who stole a garden gnome from the front lawn of a very elegant mansion and took it for a trip around the world. They would send postcards back to the owner saying things like, 'Having a lovely time in the Fiji Islands' and sign it, 'The Garden Gnome.' After six weeks, they brought the garden gnome back and left it on the lawn with little suitcases full of tiny clothing they'd knitted for it.

You don't have to be the greatest gardener in the world to make a difference--You just need a gnome.

HOME “HOME IS MORE THAN JUST A BUILDING                               BOUNDED BY FOUR WALLS.   IT IS A FEELING OF WELL-BEING     WHERE COMFORT AND SAFETY CALLS.   YOU CAN HANG YOUR HAT AND COAT   UPON ALMOST ANY CHAIR,   OR TOSS IT TO THE COUCH OR FLOOR;    DOES ANYBODY CARE?   KICK OFF YOUR SHOES AND WALK     AROUND IN YOUR BARE FEET;  THOUGH IF YOU WANT, GOING NAKED     IS ALSO KIND OF NEAT!  IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER,  IT IS YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU CAN DO THE THINGS YOUR HEART DESIRES,    BUT THAT, YOU ALWAYS KNEW. SO, SETTLE BACK, ENJOY THE DAY,    PICK OUT A GARDEN GNOME. ENJOY ANOTHER MOUNTAIN DEW…    THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME!

The forest floor erupted into a carpet of gnomes. They emerged from open splits in nearby trees and what looked like burrows in the ground, and spilled out around us, probably a hundred in all, all in the same primary-colored uniforms and white caps, long beards extending nearly to their belts. The ground looked like the overstock aisle at a garden accessory store.

It was always like this. Yes, the black-and-white debutantes of yore looked prim and proper and decorous and calm—like a row of carnations in white silk. But so did we, in our picture. In actual life there are no sepia tones. Call it the Unified Tastelessness Theory of History. In historic homes, people are always uncovering hidden layers of really hideous paint; James Madison’s bedroom was a wince-making teal. That statue was not the tasteful white you see; it used to look like Liberace on a bad day. There was a time when no yard in Ancient Athens was considered complete without a cheery stone phallus; they were like rude garden gnomes. Why would it have been any different in the ballrooms of a century ago? No one notices she’s living in a golden age. Probably if I’d been around then, I’d have spent most of my time lurking in the powder room, admiring the fractal patterns in the woodwork, catching up on my reading. If I were stuck at a dinner table next to Oscar Wilde, I would have sighed and wished myself back in time, next to Samuel Johnson. And so on, back and back and back until I ran into Dicaeopolis. In a strange way, that was comforting.

Jessica was very pretty, but she wasn't very smart and she accidentally ran herself over with the family station wagon while she was unloading her hand painted garden gnomes at an arts and crafts fair. The witnesses couldn't explain quite how she did it, but no one who knew her was surprised.

Morris wondered what domestic catastrophe would make a man sell even the plaster gnomes from his garden.It was a horrid piece of evidence for mutability; Mutability, goddess of the auction room, dusty-fingered Mutability, the old-age pensioner goddess. And she ruled over the casserole containing the half-empty packet of sugar no one would ever finish, now; and the dropsical white tea-pot with the brown tidemark left in by years of the-making by dead women in flowered aprons ( withered and dead, all the chintz flowers); over all the odd, disjointed fragments of other people's lives.

Mr. Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their homemade strawberry ice cream, and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Harry was feeling extremely well fed and at peace with the world as he watched several gnomes sprinting through the

In short, you have all the social prospects of a garden gnome.

Sorry Santa’s a little dead,” he said behind his beard, “but the damned garden gnomes gave him a good knocking around. They’re all communists, you know, every one of them. But now Santa would like to hear a poem or two. Can anyone think of a nice poem?

Nabbi’s restored my faith in dwarves, because it was in fact a claustrophobic tunnel. The ceiling was a low-clearance hazard. The walls were papered with old fight posters like DONNER THE DESTROYER VS. MINI-MURDER, ONE NIGHT ONLY! featuring pictures of muscular snarling dwarves in wrestling masks. Mismatched tables and chairs were occupied by a dozen mismatched dwarves—some svartalfs like Blitzen who could easily have passed for human, some much shorter guys who could have easily passed for garden gnomes. A few of the patrons glanced at us, but nobody seemed shocked that I was a human…if they even realized. The idea that I could pass for a dwarf was pretty disturbing. The most unreal thing about the bar was Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” blasting from the speakers. “Dwarves like human music?” I asked Blitzen. “You mean humans like our music.” “But…” I had a sudden image of Taylor Swift’s mom and Freya having a girls’ night out in Nidavellir. “Never mind.

This is discrimination. Not everyone’s got legs like a goddamn garden gnome.

Harry, and Ron were the only ones who knew that the angel on top of the tree was actually a garden gnome that had bitten Fred on the ankle as he pulled up carrots for Christmas dinner. Stupefied, painted gold, stuffed into a miniature tutu and with small wings glued to its back, it glowered down at them all, the ugliest angel Harry had ever seen, with a large bald head like a potato and rather hairy feet.

Hobbes shook his head, a strange expression in his eyes, which were no longer red. ‘It looks like a gnome.’ ‘A gnome? That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing. Is there?’ He shrugged. The horror was growing inside. ‘I don’t get it. Why would anyone want to kill a gnome?’ ‘For illegally fishing in a garden pond? And, if you don’t believe it’s a gnome, what else do you think it might be?

Mr. McCall cradled his four casaba melons in his hands. They were still attached to the vine. “I came out to water my casabas and I found this... this...” He was too upset to finish. He held the melons out to us. “Whoa!” I cried in amazement. No raccoon could have done this. No way. Someone had taken a black marker and drawn big, sloppy smiley faces on each melon!

Bern smiled. “That’s a solid argument, and if I wasn’t your cousin, I would totally believe it. You’re making an emotional decision. You would help her if her magic consisted of conjuring up cute garden gnomes.” “Bernard,” my mom said in her Mom voice. “I want to help her as much as anyone,” Bern said, “but my job in this family of Care Bears is to provide logical analysis, so humor me.

he main point is that Conrad realistically described the terrible things done by Belgians in the Congo. Hochschild certainly wishes this was Conrad’s purpose. He repeats an old theory that Kurtz was based on the EIC officer Léon Rom whom Conrad “may have met” in 1890 and “almost certainly” read about in 1898. Visitors noted that Rom’s garden was decorated with polished skulls buried in the ground, the garden gnomes of the Congo then. But Kurtz’s compound has no skulls buried in the ground but rather freshly severed “heads on the stakes” that “seemed to sleep at the top of that pole.” As the British scholar Johan Adam Warodell notes, none of the “exclusively European prototypes” for Kurtz advanced by woke professors and historians followed this native mode of landscape gardening. By contrast, dozens of accounts of African warlords and slavers in the Congo published before 1898 described rotting heads on poles (“a wide-reaching area marked by a grass fence, tied to high poles, which at the very top were decorated with grinning, decomposing skulls,” as one 1888 account had it). Far from being “one of the most scathing indictments of [European] imperialism in all literature,” as Hochschild declares it, Heart of Darkness is one of the most scathing indictments of the absence of European imperialism in all literature. Kurtz is a symbol of the pre-colonial horrors of the Congo, horrors that the EIC, however fitfully, was bringing to an end.

Maybe there’s something you can do to make your usual activities just a bit more memorable. Get matching T-shirts for a family excursion. Print up a silly photo for your desk, and switch it out frequently, or put a vignette outside your home office window (garden gnomes are the epitome of whimsy). Hang a disco ball or a string of lights

He gazed at her with open worry. "Are you okay?" "Just – just…" Needed to remember that she was extremely pissed at him for invading her life. "I had a nightmare." He quirked an eyebrow. "Lawn gnomes had taken Hal. I couldn't find him." "Ah, so you don't really hate him?" She was caught off guard by the question. "No! Why would you say that?" "Friendship is a rare beast in our line. Most people only fake it." "I don't fake anything.

Oh for heaven’s sake,” she snapped, now directing her wand at a dustpan, which hopped off the sideboard and started skating across the floor, scooping up the potatoes. “Those two!” she burst out savagely, now pulling pots and pans out of a cupboard, and Harry knew she meant Fred and George. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to them, I really don’t. No ambition, unless you count making as much trouble as they possibly can. . . .” Mrs. Weasley slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her wand around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the wand-tip as she stirred. “It’s not as though they haven’t got brains,” she continued irritably, taking the saucepan over to the stove and lighting it with a further poke of her wand, “but they’re wasting them, and unless they pull themselves together soon, they’ll be in real trouble. I’ve had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they’re going, they’ll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office.” Mrs. Weasley jabbed her wand at the cutlery drawer, which shot open. Harry and Ron both jumped out of the way as several knives soared out of it, flew across the kitchen, and began chopping the potatoes, which had just been tipped back into the sink by the dustpan. “I don’t know where we went wrong with them,” said Mrs. Weasley, putting down her wand and starting to pull out still more saucepans. “It’s been the same for years, one thing after another, and they won’t listen to — OH NOT AGAIN!” She had picked up her wand from the table, and it had emitted a loud squeak and turned into a giant rubber mouse. “One of their fake wands again!” she shouted. “How many times have I told them not to leave them lying around?” She grabbed her real wand and turned around to find that the sauce on the stove was smoking. “C’mon,” Ron said hurriedly to Harry, seizing a handful of cutlery from the open drawer, “let’s go and help Bill and Charlie.” They left Mrs. Weasley and headed out the back door into the yard. They had only gone a few paces when Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, Crookshanks, came pelting out of the garden, bottlebrush tail held high in the air, chasing what looked like a muddy potato on legs. Harry recognized it instantly as a gnome. Barely ten inches

He’s either been shot or he impaled himself on a fucking garden gnome,” Remi said. “Help me get him inside.

Mavis dated this guy for a while back in the day who looked like one of those garden gnomes. She said he went at it like a rabid mink. Don’t trust appearances

Lawn Lovely is a store two blocks from our house. It’s the place where Dad buys his lawn ornaments. A lot of lawn ornaments. Dad is as nuts about lawn ornaments as he is about gardening. We have so many lawn ornaments in our front yard, it’s impossible to mow the lawn! What a crowd scene! We have two pink plastic flamingos. A cement angel with huge white wings. A chrome ball on a silver platform. A whole family of plaster skunks. A fountain with two kissing swans. A seal that balances a beach ball on its nose. And a chipped plaster deer.

Considering how shaky was his moral outlook and how marked his tendency to weave low plots at the drop of a hat, you would have expected Bingley's headquarters to have been one of those sinister underground dens lit by stumps of candles stuck in the mouths of empty beer bottles such as abound, I believe, in places like Whitechapel and Limehouse. But no. Number 5 Ormond Crescent turned out to be quite an expensive-looking joint with a nice little bit of garden in front of it well supplied with geraniums, bird baths and terracotta gnomes, the sort of establishment that might have belonged to a blameless retired Colonel or a saintly stockbroker. Evidently his late uncle hadn't been just an ordinary small town grocer, weighing out potted meats and raisins to a public that had to watch the pennies, but something on a much more impressive scale. I learned later that he had owned a chain of shops, one of them as far afield as Birmingham, and why the ass had gone and left his money to a chap like Bingley is more than I can tell you, though the probability is that Bingley, before bumping him off with some little-known Asiatic poison, had taken the precaution of forging the will.

I stand between them in the elevator like we’re three mismatched garden gnomes.

A few moments later, a short, bearded man crossed the lawn toward us. For a moment, I thought an ancient garden gnome had come to life, but it turned out to be Mr. Brewster.