You know you're an Allentown gardener if ...

A bunch of Western New York bloggers are playing the neighborhood stereotype game, prompted by this article. Here's mine:

You Know You’re an Allentown Gardener if:

1. The only grass you have is on the patch between sidewalk and road and you’re in the process of replacing that with perennials or some kind of hardscaping.

2. You disdain overly flamboyant holiday decorations and tend to favor tasteful white candles and lighting that highlights the architecture of your house. Or you go the other way—all the way—and create a spectacle that becomes a tourist destination (no inflatables though).

3. Flamboyance is always encouraged in summer however, when cars screech to a halt so the occupants can stare at your bright orange and red cannas, daylilies, oriental lilies, and tropicals in your front yard.

4. Any use of gazing balls, pink flamingos, and smoking cowboy silhouettes is purely ironic and only brought out for parties, which, admittedly, are frequent.

5. Architectural remnants and strange stone objects from former Buffalo mansions are common throughout the neighborhood.

6. You have at least one outside bar, one upper, and one lower dining space, and a complex outside lighting and sound system. Fortunately, the local precinct has been ignoring noise complaints from Allentown for some years. Gunshots will alert them, so be advised.

7. Though your back yard is the size of a Civic, you have one and usually two ponds, both containing koi the size of small dogs.

8. Participation in Garden Walk is handed down from homeowner to homeowner. Hapless newcomers who think they can get away without entering Garden Walk are pressured until they give in, hiring a landscaping service if necessary to make sure their garden is up to snuff.

9. Though ponds are considered the main event, throwaway water features like fountains, birdbaths, and Zen-like bubbly thingies are common, though they do not qualify as water features on the Garden Walk application.

10. Every morning, neighbors greet each other and enjoy coffee while gingerly removing crack bags, syringes, and junk food wrappers from the front of their properties.