Gazing Balls

Now that it's summer and I get outside more often, I have turned my hypercritical sights to the great outdoors. Lo and behold, there is great jankery in America's backyard! I must address it.

This is called a "gazing ball" or globe:

I can remember hating these at first sight, whenever that was.

I guess the point of a gazing ball is that the spherical and metallic surface reflects the garden for our viewing pleasure. I don't know about you, but I can see the garden from my vantage point at 5'8", I am not about to lean my ass down to peer at a metal ball for the purpose of seeing my garden warped and fisheyed. Plus, usually they are some kind of bright unnatural color, all the worse for reflective purposes.

There are all manner of stands and pedestals for the ball to sit on top of. Most of them are ugly. Here is a particularly puketastic fairy and mushroom one that M. White found:

Everyone has their own aesthetic when it comes to gardening. Since I am not a homeowner, mine is called: "ignore whatever is growing outside my apartment". However, if I did have a garden, my preference would not be to overload it with kitschy lawn ornaments. I would especially not throw in a few of these gazing balls. And why does it seem that every garden in which I have seen one or more these things is half-dead unkempt weedy mess on top of it all? More likely than not they will have added a few stone animals, fairies, and a bird bath or two... an unfair assault on our eyes!