Last years' flowers.

That photo was taken two years ago in fact. We aren't allowed to stand notices on the pavements now in case anyone trips over them and sues the council. At the moment the flower baskets haven't arrived. Forres prides itself (rightly so) on winning 'Scotland in Bloom' from time to time and even when it doesn't win it always does well. Happily for me I have a bracket on the wall that the "Forres In Bloom' committee like to use for the hanging baskets. A watering truck comes round regularly to look after it so the display is there at no effort to myself (I do contribute to the cost.)
The gardening gnomes are a bit late this year (I believe a lot of them are volanteers) most of the effort is still being made in the park where the lamentable wire-armitaged 'sculptures' are under construction. Whose idea was that I wonder? It looks so artificial. We have had teddybear's picnics with plastic bees, and last year there was a plane in plastic and the RAF emblem... I think. I forget rather quickly as they are not my favourite floral arrangements. Often there is a peacock who is rather fine. One year his head was stolen, which brought a bit of excitement to the neighbourhood. (A short skit of this event performed later had the head turning up as the crowning glory on the nwly-unveiled statue of a local worthy.)
These eccentricities are not so bad as the Nairn creations which are of larger-than-life golfers (famous golf course there you see) Over the summer the flowers stuffed into the wire frames to make the golfers' faces, hands, pullovers and trousers go a bit wild, blurring the outlines and making them look more like moth-eaten rotting corpses than manly swingers.

I like the hanging baskets best, and the tubs, most of which miraculously survive the evening carousers.

There's a lovely show of daisies on the lawn in front of the church opposite. I appreciate them far more than the regimented rows of flowering plants that have ben put in along the edges. I want to nip out at night and rearrange them. Shan't of course.