Pinterest Friendly Fall Displays

My yard becomes a living, breathing salute to autumn every September. As the weeks move on, it morphs from the blaze of multi-colored stacking pumpkin beauty to the more October tones of orange, white, rust, sage green and dusky blue. It is the triumph of the growing season: The beauty of color before the leaves fall...

Wither...

Die...

And the cold north wind ushers in lake effect snow and thick, sullen gray clouds. Shades of gray and white dominate us for months... and look how my reindeer are buried there! How will they fly????

Winter here is about five months long, maybe six if October snaps early and April stays cold. Living along a Great Lake, the prevailing west/northwest winds funnel cold air off of Lake Ontario in April and May and channel Canadian Clippers from the north in the fall. This huge lake has a monster effect on our weather patterns, and it's even big enough to push off summer thunderstorms, leaving our corner of Western New York in an almost annual summer drought. We watch the clouds form...

Then break. It will rain three miles south of us, and over the lake (thunderstorms over the lakes can be dangerous for boaters, as you can imagine. And they form quickly on hot, humid summer days.)

But that precursor to winter, the blaze of a beautiful fall is something to remember! We live in the heart of the Northeast Woodlands, and if you watch Wild Kratts (anyone with kids will understand that reference!) you'll know that our area is a full four season salute, but right now the focus is on fall, fall, fall!

 See the wagon in the middle? It started out like this:

 And morphed to this:

And here's the front porch, trying to make it gorgeous without hay bales... it's not easy, those bales set a great stage, but we'll see if we can pull this off with stumps and crates!

This was a challenge because the fun of decorating is in the various heights that draw the eye up from street level. As I worked on this display, I realized I wasn't happy with it and dragged Beth into the conversation... she promptly replaced the little bench with a bigger one. That helped fill the space. We do this display as a photo opp for folks. Kids can sit on the old steps and have their picture taken surrounded by autumn.... So here it is with bigger bench and more eye-catchers. Also notice that I used some cute hangings for the wall at the back....

 

Two really cute kids on the front porch swing! Lena and my friend's granddaughter, Anna....

 

And then there's this look using logs:

Isn't that fun?

And this one using an old wheelbarrow type thing we found on the side of the road:

Displays don't have to be big and fancy to be beautiful. And the nice thing about our squashes is that we can eat most of them when we're done displaying them! That's a post for next week, which of these squashes are delicious food that sells in Europe for crazy high prices.... You'll love hearing about it!

And here's our big photo opp that's over in the pumpkin display area pictured at the top of this post:

Mandy and Paul put the backdrop in place a few weeks ago, so we used both sides of it to give folks ideas.

And because this could never be done alone, huge thanks to Beth, Jon, Mandy, Paul, Lisa, Zach, Ginny and Catherine who've volunteered to help us get set up... and to wait on customers. We could never do this without a whole team effort, and we couldn't sell at these prices without volunteers to man the weekend sales shifts. What a blessing they are to us!

USA Today bestselling author Ruth Logan Herne has published over fifty novels and novellas and is still pinching herself to see if this is all real... and it is! Co-owner of a fun and somewhat crazy pumpkin farm in Western New York, Ruthy sneaks off on her own in the middle of the night to write beautiful stories because no one bothers her in the middle of the night. Funny how that works! :) Find her on facebook, visit her website ruthloganherne.com or email her at loganherne@gmail.com. She'd love to hear from you!