The buzz around my house and with my friends is planning and planting our garden. Tilling the soil is a task that will be completed soon. We really enjoy our garden.

And a garden wouldn’t be complete without a gnome.

I have this dear friend, I’ll nickname her Flower for this post.

Flower and I met at work more than 12 years ago. She’s my work mentor and always will be. You know, that person you can always call and ask the dumbest question? Flower is that person for me. She quickly became more than a mentor or coworker. She’s one of my best friends who seems to always senses (halfway across Arkansas) when I feel as though my life is hectic or unbearable…and she’ll call me. It’s uncanny. (And she reads my blog. Hi, Flower!)

Our jobs are very intense and serious. However, when we worked closely together, we seemed to find small segments of time where we channeled our both very creative streaks into fun during our scarce downtime.

A few years ago, our friend D.C. purchased his first home and we were so proud of him.

Unbeknownst to me, Flower had been secretly leaving a gnome on his front porch when she’d visit his town. It started out as a housewarming gesture.

 

As with any of our projects, Flower was thinking many steps ahead and luckily she brought me into the plot. She had already delivered three cheesy gnomes purchased at Cracker Barrel on his porch and she was sure D.C. would correlate a gnome’s arrival with a work visit from Flower.

So one afternoon when Flower wasn’t in town, I drove to D.C’s lovely new home and very carefully positioned an odd cute female gnome on his front porch by the front door. I remember laughing so hard and taking a picture for proof. I was so proud of myself.

Flower and I continued Operation Gnome for a few more weeks until D.C.’s friend told us that D.C. was beginning to freak out.

D.C.’s imagination had him convinced that he had his own female stalker.

Flower and I knew it was time to reveal ourselves, but we couldn’t just tell him…that would be too easy. So we increased the suspense a notch. On reveal day, we left 20 plus gnome sayings printed on magnets all over D.C.’s work place and places he visited…even his truck. They were very small and we had more fun creating our magnetic gnome sayings than anything else. Sayings like “Gnome-a-licious”, “There’s no place like gnome”, and ….

These sayings were printed on small magnetic strips and distributed.

D.C. seemed uneasy when he began noticing our tiny signs displayed in crazy places. Flower finally revealed that we had been the gnome culprits.

What do you have planned for April Fool’s Day? Have any garden tasks or plans?