This table was set for a soup party – the perfect repast for a chilly October evening. Three different homemade soups were served: cream potato, vegetable and beef, and Julia Child’s Soup in a Pumpkin which is a creamy cheese and onion soup cooked and served inside a pumpkin!

The table cloth is a rusty orange and in the center we bunched up a piece of sheer fabric that’s black with a bat pattern. Each place setting included a variety of bowls stacked on top of a salad plate for antipasto and a variety of country breads and baguettes. Favors were made by filling ice cream cones with mints and eerie sayings and quotes that we printed out on parchment. Orange and yellow tissue paper and white floral tape were used to wrap the cones to look like candy corns.

The cauldron is a plastic planter with a small fountain mister inside. We ran the wire up through the split in the table and filled in with pumpkins, gourds, apples, pears, and pomegranates. Lots of vines and fall leaf garlands were draped all around.

One of the guests commented, “Only at your house would we be invited for dinner and find a smoldering cauldron on the dining room table!” Someone else asked, “Could you pass the butter? If you can find it in all the weeds!”

Even though fall has arrived, the garden still flourishes in vibrant color. Our Autumnal garden was chosen as by HGTV as one of their Favorite Fall Gardens of 2004.

“The summer garden works intensively to produce herbs and flowers, and just when you think it can’t do another thing, the white flowers of chocolate Joe pyeweed burst forth and the seed heads on the corn-like sorghum mature. Crows gather with the ripe pumpkins and mums. The fragrance of waning foliage signals that it’s time to also harvest bottle gourds from the vines on the arbor, while fuzzy tails of red fountain grass wave in the breeze, beckoning you to come and sit awhile to revel in the exuberant sights and sounds of the season.”