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Yard Signage

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There are quite a few fairy gardens on the various paths that I walk each day.  Some at the edges of the sidewalk, two different ones in big pots, one on a tree trunk.  My favorite though is a large one near Lake Harriet that wraps around the bushes along the front sidewalk.  It has just about everything you can imagine including a teeny tiny yard side for Black Lives Matter (in the upper right corner).  As you probably can figure, I think this is charming.

I come by my love of yard signs naturally.  My folks usually always had a sign up for some candidate or other at election time.  The year my dad was the campaign manager for a friend running for city council, one whole side of our yard (that faced the busier street) was lined with them.  They even let me put up a “No Nukes” sign when I was in college, although our house at that point was at the end of a cul de sac so I’m sure the sign didn’t get seen by too many people.

I’ve been thinking about adding a yard sign for my presidential favorite almost every morning when I’m walking the dog, but then I get back to the house and promptly forget about it.  After seeing the little fairy garden yard sign, I sent myself an email to remind me, then drove up to Northern Sun (I love them – I was SO happy when I realized that I had moved to the city where their store is located!) and picked up my sign, which is now in my yard, along with my BLM sign.  Somehow having two signs feels quite natural – guess I’ll have to find another sign after the election so I will still have two!

Are you a yard sign person?  Or a fairy garden fancier?

33 thoughts on “Yard Signage”

  1. I’ve always been hesitant to put up political signs, because I serve as an election judge. Although election judges all have their own political views, it just seems to me that it’s better for voters coming into the polling place to view the judges as plausibly neutral.

    I did make an exception when the voter ID issue was on the ballot a number of years ago. I posted my VOTE NO sign prominently.

    Another sign I put out a couple of years ago was one that wished a blessed Ramadan to our Muslim neighbors. I don’t really know if any Muslims live in the area, but there was a woman working as a PCA on my street for awhile, and it seemed like a nice gesture. That sign disappeared, and I’m not sure if it blew down or somebody removed it. Perhaps I left it up past the end of Ramadan, I’m not sure.

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    2. Hey Linda, yesterday on my walk I was actually thinking about election officials. Assuming they still need volunteers on election day? Are there rules? Do you have to spend the whole day there? Not like I have too much else to do, I could volunteer.

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      1. I think all the counties are short on poll workers this year. I’m sure they would be happy to hear from you. The deadline to sign up is October 9th in Ramsey County, probably similar in Hennepin. I don’t think you have to stay in your own county, but most people do. You would have to spend a couple of hours taking an online training course. You would get paid, though it’s not a lot.

        In the Twin Cities metro, most of the poll workers identify as Democrat. The elections office is supposed to try to balance the political parties, and it helps if you classify yourself as something other than Democrat. They try really hard to find a couple of Rebublicans for every precinct, but in this area it’s tough. I changed my party preference to Green Party when that was an an option a few years ago, now it’s just listed as “Other”.

        They really want people to stay the whole day, but depending on how desperate they are, they might let you sign up for half.

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  2. As State employees, we were always cautioned to keep our political and religious views out of the office. We never put up yard signs for that reason, as well as to not draw attention to our home, since we didn’t want most people to know where we lived. (We also never put our address in the phone book.) When the white supremacist put his flag up on his house across the street, I was tempted to put up something, but his tenure in the neighborhood was short lived. There aren’t any signs up on our block.

    We have a small cast iron winged pig in a front flower bed. I like to think that our gardens and flowerbeds send a message of caring and hope. Perhaps we will be sign people when we are both retired.

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  3. I recently read that political lawn signs are the least effective way of promoting a candidacy. Why then are they so popular? Politicians like visual confirmation of their popularity. So the answer seems to be politician egos drive lawn signage.

    I used to live near one of the nicest men in Saint Paul, a man who was considerably more conservative than I. Putting up a lawn sign felt discourteous to me, so I didn’t do it. I might have overcome those feelings if I’d believed lawn signs actually affect the vote, but they don’t.

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    1. yes they do. and they let the neighbors know who you are. the ones that don’t want to talk to a democrat are a welcome exclusion from my life. when obama ran i put up my signs and found out because of it all the people at the bus stop were of the same ilk. they were afraid to put up signs because of all the red neighbors. i had my obama signs disappear 3 or 4 times
      it’s not how many times you get knocked down it’s that you stand up after each time

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      1. Steve, I agree with what you’ve seen about signs being not affective in terms of changing anyone’s mind about their political choice. I’ve actually come to believe in the last few years that trying to convince anyone to change their political point may actually be a waste of time. But like tim, I like the world to know where I stand, so that’s why I keep putting signs in my yard.

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      2. Well, we disagree. My neighbors all knew my politics, for we had friendly discussions and I wrote letters to the community paper. My reluctance to display political signs had nothing to do with being afraid. My neighbor to the east was extremely concerned about the look of his property, so for me it was an issue of courtesy.

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  4. yes

    texted dfl person to tell them i have a great yard for signs and they started sending out sign pounders
    school board first
    then biden smith phillips and two city council

    still no sign for state senator or congressperson

    i finally live in a blue city
    they voted all the blue in last election
    what a treat

    i got all old (biden with no mention of harris )
    small signs but i like the billboard effect as thousands of cars drive by daily

    saw a cool “vote joe!” sign yesterday and one with only harris head as sign presentation
    ( she had great hair in that one )

    blm
    rainbow
    any functioning person 2020
    whirled peas

    they may have to have hole predrilled so november turf is ready

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  5. No yard so no signs or gardens.
    But I do have this garden tale to share. By now most folks have heard that Trump believes a c-19 vaccine will be available in October. “On October 31, The Great Pumpkin will arise from the White House Pharmacy Vaccine Patch and deliver vaccine to all the good little Trumpists around the world.”
    If you see this message posted know that I am the source.

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  6. My personal favorite sign I’ve seen so far is “Any Functioning Adult, 2020”.
    VS, I love knowing that the tiny Black Lives Matter sign exists. Also relieved to know Northern Sun has survived the summer.

    I have a lot to say about this topic, so will probably come back several times today.

    1. I’ve read a few articles, and as Steve noted, they say yard signs don’t change anyone’s mind. That may be true, but for The Undecided, even the unconscious awareness of which signs a person is seeing more of can be an influence, I think. Yesterday I started volunteering at our county DFL office, and the Biden-Harris signs just came in last week – there’s a lot of traffic. Till now, it’s been demoralizing to see nothing but mostly Republican signs, and there is a lot of traffic in the hours we are open.

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  7. 2. I too am hesitant to put out a lot of yard signs. I have signs for local and Minnesota races, which are the only signs so far on our block… I want something that’s not so much “in your face”, so I’ll bring home a Biden-Harris sign for the window.

    It really is true how yard signs expose your identity – an acquaintance from t’ai chi lives nearby, and since she’s put out all her Republican signs on her corner lot, I’m afraid I now harbor negative feelings toward her. She hasn’t changed at all from the person I would talk to during our water breaks, but I no longer have an interested in getting to know her better. This seems sad to me – maybe when (if?) we get past the election…

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  8. There are no Trump signs in our neighborhood. There are a few scattered Republicans but they keep a low profile. The way you can tell them is by the many American flags they plant in their yard and around their house. Why is one flag never sufficient?

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  9. We do yard signs, not because we think we’re going to convert anyone, but to let the world know where we stand on issues. It’s our way of showing our solidarity with neighbors of whatever skin color, sexual orientation, and religious persuasion. If anyone takes offense at that, that’s their problem.

    Back when Sean Spicer was White House Press Secretary and was caught lurking in the bushes outside the White House, husband made a life size photo of Spicer’s head and mounted it on a stick. We planted the stick behind a tall shrub in our front yard. The sign was up for about a month, I think. A couple of years later, I was collecting clothes and household goods for a family that had been displaced by the Drake Hotel fire in Minneapolis. One of the women who dropped off some stuff for the family said, “oh you’re the one who had Sean Spicer lurking in your bushes.” She lives in the neighborhood, and had noticed the sign when driving by. She thought it was pretty funny.

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      1. We had no idea whether anyone had ever noticed Sean in the bushes. It was pretty fun to discover that someone had, and that it had brought a smile to her lips.

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  10. HI-
    We’re so far off the road, and on a dead end no less, there’s no point in having a yard sign as only us and our one neighbor would see it. And at least we’re on the same political fence.
    Years ago, we did get a Ross Perot sign and put that up in a field. That was before we realized he was as crazy as the rest of them.

    Our neighbors have some land that goes right to the highway. A few years ago he was putting small anti-tRump signs out. They usually wouldn’t last too long. Then they got buried in snow drifts and he didn’t do any more.

    Well… there was one other sign just this spring.
    As I said, we live on a dead end road. Part of the road is a township road, so it’s public road. It’s a nice rural road surrounded by trees and people often park on the side for a nap or lunch or just a break.

    But someone was stopping and then. … …

    doing a #2.

    Just off the side of the road. Neighbor would find the toilet paper when he walked. SERIOUSLY!!?? There’s a Kwik Trip 1/2 mile up the road! And after multiple episodes he put up a small sign in that space: “Poop Happens”
    Maybe it was the sign, maybe it was summer and the weeds got too bad but they stopped anyway. Seriously people.

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  11. OT – a couple of days ago we were talking about things stuck in our brains. The list below, though new to me, and therefore not stuck in my brain, would be a good candidate for things to remember. I’m especially fond of this one: ” A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.”

    An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
    • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
    • A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
    • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
    • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
    • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
    • Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
    • A question mark walks into a bar?
    • A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
    • Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”
    • A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
    • A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
    • Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
    • A synonym strolls into a tavern.
    • At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
    • A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
    • Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
    • A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
    • An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
    • The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
    • A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
    • The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
    • A dyslexic walks into a bra.
    • A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
    • A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
    • A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
    • A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony
    – Jill Thomas Doyle

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  12. 3. It’s distressing to me that people are so low, they will steal other people’s yard signs, but as mentioned above, shit happens. Here’s an antidote sign from a while ago:
    “You stole our Obama sign; we bought another sign; Obama campaign gets more money.”

    That was from 50 Funny Yard Signs… about politics and yard sales and dog walking…
    https://shareably.net/50-funny-yard-signs-neighbors-notice/

    Another is this one which I love, have posted before https://www.amazon.com/Soliciting-Broke-Anything-Voting-Please/dp/B01M7XDGTO

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  13. 4. And for after the election, there are those “common decency” yard signs: Love EVERYBODY, Kindness Changes Everything…
    I read an article, but can’t lay my hands on it now, that explained how many people find them offensive, preachy. I can’t help it, I still like them

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