Monday, October 13, 2014

Autumn Rituals

 Happy Thanksgiving! 

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. We had our Thanksgiving turkey dinner yesterday. Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays, it sums up my love for Autumn.


I don't know about you but I have seasonal rituals. When late summer arrives I start collecting dried seed heads and flowers. Once Autumn arrives I begin picking up leaves and bringing them home. The mantel obligingly accepts my little tokens of our walks so this is an ongoing assemblage of "stuff".


You can see that a few weeks later there are more leaves and seed heads; a black turned wood candle stick found at Salvation Army has aslo been added to the ever growing accumulation. My wife's birthday cards were added to the mantle as well.


Another of my rituals is the front door urn. I bought this giant metal urn with birthday money several years ago. It was on sale, the price tag was no where to be found, the sales girl looked it up on the computer, it was the last one left and had been marked down even more. I love a deal!

I never know exactly what I will do with the urn but I start collecting bits and pieces to use during the late summer gardening. This year I pruned the crab apple tree. There was a very large branch that I wondered if it would fit in behind the urn, it did, and it looks great.

I had also pruned the myrtle tree so I used some of it in behind the urn to frame it.


Here is a closer look at the urn. The top of the urn is covered with chicken wire and then with dried grasses and leaves to hide the wire.


There was so much myrtle that I made this huge wreath, it is at least 4 feet across.


Several weeks I have added dried elephant garlic seed heads and three very twisty oriental poppy seed heads to the wreath. The wreath has dried out somewhat and changed colour considerably. I like that it has blended in with the wall a little more. It has sagged a bit on the left hand side, I may wire it in place a bit or I may just leave it, we shall see.


We attended a wedding last week, one of the daughters of a long time friend was getting married. I love wrapping gifts for weddings so that they are totally over the top elegant. Actually I love wrapping gifts, check out  the post to see more gift wrapping that I did for a Christmas display a few years ago.


The front door decorations sat for a few weeks until we went to the country last Wednesday to purchase some squash and pumpkins. All of our squash are kept outside in the display so that they don't rot from being in the warm house. They are eaten on a regular basis so the display constantly changes; pumpkins will be added closer to Hallowe'en.

This last August I noticed that moss was growing on our old wooden sawhorse, I immediately knew I wanted to use it for the front door display.


 Here is a close-up of the squash and the saw horse. The bamboo broom is not there for the decor, although it does look like a great witch's broom, it is the best thing for sweeping up leaves and fir needles. I hate the noise of leaf blowers and this gives you a workout as well, you can't beat that can you.

1 comment:

Mistress Laudanum said...

Len, your display is wonderful!
So very creative.
I love the idea that your items can be left outside, this would not be possible here, too much rain and wind :o)
Thank you too for your support blogwise :o)