Thanks to my meteorologically-informed friend Fred, I now know that
this weird object by the pond is a
weather station!
The metal arms around the outside seemed like they'd be functional somehow, but as Fred says:
The thing with all the metal things around it is a rain/snow gauge, and the metal things are a windshield that's supposed to block the wind but not block rain. The white cylinder thing presumably catches the rain/snow.
https://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm02252325/
The little white thing to the bottom left I'm almost 100% sure is a temperature/humidity sensor inside a weather shield.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1067700
So, there you have it. Lazyweb still works outside of Twitter!