It’s rare that I hand off the reigns of the trusty steed 100 Scope Notes, but how can I pass up the chance to spread the word about a book that I think is wonderful? Ben Hatke’s Julia’s House for Lost Creatures arrives today, and he’s visiting some blogs to talk about the creatures that inhabit the book and share an illustration. Take it away, Ben.

Gnomes and Fairies: They go together like peanut butter and jelly. Found most often in gardens of the overgrown and rarely manicured kind, gnomes and fairies are creatures of the earth and air respectively. Gnomes are generally beneficial to vegetable gardens, as fairies are good for more decorative horticulture. They probably do not belong indoors.

Though often depicted with insect-like wings, fairy wings can just as easily look like leaves or petals, giving the impression, when they fly, of loose garden clippings flitting about.

As indoor guests, both gnomes and fairies should be relegated to a greenhouse if possible. Gnomes, after all, prefer sleeping in flower pots and fairies like sleeping wherever there are gnomes (the result being that sometimes what looks like a potted plant turns out to be a fairy sleeping on a gnomes head).

A Note from Ben: Meaning no offense to those people who collect those red hatted garden gnomes, but I like the idea of true garden gnomes looking more like living clods of dirt.

Photo credits:

Julia’s House for Lost Creatures: Ben Hatke

Garden Gnome – 02: Joe Bar https://flic.kr/p/od8jiW