Beware the glittery vases in west Belfast

  One of the things I like to do in every place we are is walk around the neighborhoods. You see the houses, the stores, parks, people going about their everyday life. 

The houses here are terraced just any other UK city. Here they have tiny front yards where the put flowers or sometimes just gravel.

The other day on our way back from the peace wall, we walked through a Catholic neighborhood.  It was on a busy street with the usual terraced houses, neatly kept.

Then we came to a section where there were small artificial turf lawns in front. Then I noticed that the houses had these glittery silver vases in the front windows with different designs. 

I wondered what’s this about? Is this some kind of tradition? A religious thing? I looked it up online. It’s just a thing they do on some west Belfast streets.

There were a lot of people from Belfast who made sarcastic remarks about the phenomenom saying they were tacky, some kind of competitions with neighbors.

Here’s my favorite remark: 

“It’s for the ashes of your enemies, sometimes pets. But mainly enemies. Be very afraid”.

Here’s another good one:

“It’s an anti burglary measure. It says this house and everything in it is tacky. There is nothing worth stealing”.

I was thinking you could turn the the from artificial turf patch into a putting green. 

At Christmas you could put one of those 1960’s color wheel lamp for silver trees and shine it on the tree. Voila! Instant Christmas decoration!