As a child I wouldn’t have imagined growing or buying a pumpkin for any reason other than to turn it into a jack-o-lantern. How we’d look forward to cutting off the top and getting the squishy insides out so we could begin to carve a scary or happily grinning face, secure an old candle stub inside, and bask in the glow! Those pumpkins would sit on the front porch until they shriveled up and looked like toothless old men.
Who knew pumpkins would one day become sought after not for their ability to greet trick-or-treaters, but to add color and design to a front porch and to sit there, imagine this, uncarved? Yet this is what has happened. Now farmers grow pumpkins in white tones and shades of green to add to the perennial favorite, orange. Design-oriented homeowners, especially those blessed to have front porches with steps, mix these colorful gourds in with mums in shades of gold, white or magenta, hay bales and corn stalks to create gorgeous displays that announce fall is here.
If I’m blessed to go to the South during October I’m amazed by the extent to which people go to create these colorful autumn arrays. Not only do porches of homes have pumpkins stacked up to greet visitors with the warmth and hospitality of the season, but every shop and business gets into the spirit as well.
One year I went to a little town in northern Tennessee with my sister and brother-in-law. In Allardt, founded as a community of German immigrants, they annually hold the Great Pumpkin Festival and vendors sell pumpkin-designed everything! T-shirts, plaques, candles, lawn banners—all feature pumpkins welcoming visitors who come to see which farmer grew the largest pumpkin of the year. And the entries are huge. Each year the winning pumpkin weighs well over a ton! Because who doesn’t love a great pumpkin, Charlie Brown?
So whether you grow ‘em or buy ‘em, treat yourself to a plethora of pumpkins this fall. Create a front porch that delights all who drive by and welcomes all who visit with the very essence of the harvest season. Don’t have steps? No problem. Position a wooden ladder or upside-down bushel basket on your porch and stack pumpkins of all sizes and colors around and on it. Or create a pyramid of pumpkins up against the wall. And don’t forget to add some colorful mums or a cheerful scarecrow. Happy fall, y’all!
Autumn is a lovely change of season. I remember when it was legal to burn leaves we had raked from our yard. It was the smell of the season.
Oh Cheryl, so do I! Thanks for the memory. I can still remember the smell.
Fall means to me: leaf color changes here in the N.C. mountains, falling leaves, neighbors politely asking when we plan to rake our yards, and our just-as-polite answer: after Halloween. The best part of trick or treaters coming to our block was hearing the children’s happy laughter as they shuffled their feet through the fallen leaves, ignoring the driveway. I don’t recall we ever had jack-o-lanterns in my childhood on the farm, but I do remember Mom’s delicious pumpkin pies! Thanks for the memories, Nancy!
Peggy, I was blessed to be in TN and KY this month so I got to enjoy some of the fall leaves back there and the wonderful colors! Now I need to find some leaves to shuffle through! Love your memories.
Pumpkins: bright, warm, memorable and significant in their versatility and endurance to being mutilated, carved both grinning and grimacing. As always, Nancy, you breathe such a sweetness into the everyday, the mundane and the prosaic…you make everything Holy with your writ!
As do you, my friend. Thanks for adding to the harvest spirit with your comments!
Such heart-warming memories and a nudge to brighten up my own front steps for fall. And, as I type this, the snow is lightly falling. There is such beauty in embracing the change of seasons. Thank you for this reminder, my friend.
Beth, I have lots of photos of snow on a pumpkin taken over the years! Must be a Colorado October rite of passage. You have so many steps! Get on it, girl!