The Great Pumpkin Showdown: Porch Traditions, Martha Stewart, and Four Years of Fall Rituals
From accidental pumpkin patches to mums vs. asters, how we decorate, restore, and compete (unofficially) with Martha each fall at Robins Hollow.
Fall Rituals Begin on the Porch
This week marks the start of October and, every house has its seasonal tell. At Robins Hollow, it’s our porches.
We’re lucky to have two porches: the wraparound porch at the front of the house, where we watch the traffic go by and wave to neighbors walking past, and the screened-in porch tucked just off the kitchen, a quieter retreat for morning coffee and reflection.
Porches, after all, are liminal spaces — not quite indoors, not fully outdoors. They’re the in-between rooms where you can feel the shift most clearly, where the rituals of one season slowly give way to the next. Around here, it’s where summer’s ease meets autumn’s urgency: cushions will soon get stacked away, pots of alyssum start to fade, and we start scheming about mums, pumpkins, and firewood deliveries.
The first cool mornings always find us on the screened-in porch — sweaters pulled tighter, coffee steaming, the faint smell of damp leaves drifting in from the yard. That’s when we know the season has tipped toward fall.
Our screened-in porch was one of the first projects we tackled after buying this nearly 200-year-old Queen Anne Victorian farmhouse. And, true to old house form, it didn’t exactly begin as planned.
The Screened-In Porch Transformation
The first cool mornings always find us on the screened-in porch — sweaters pulled tight, coffee steaming, the faint smell of damp leaves drifting in from the yard. That’s when we know the season has tipped toward fall.
It also happens to be one of the first projects we tackled after buying this nearly 200-year-old Queen Anne Victorian farmhouse. And, true to old house form, it didn’t exactly begin as planned.
When we first moved in, the porch was more spider convention hall than sitting room — home to every creepy-crawly you can imagine and not much else. Still, we dreamed of it as a three-season retreat: a place to read the paper, sip the first cup of coffee, or write down the small gratitudes that anchor a day.
One afternoon, that dream took a sudden leap forward. I turned my back for what felt like two minutes, and Sean — armed with his trusty oscillating saw and zero hesitation — had already dismantled half the porch. (No matter how long we’re together, I’m still learning there are moments you can’t turn your back on.)
What followed was one of our earliest big undertakings: a project that stretched six months, with a punch list that lingered for another two years before the last trim was nailed in. It was messy, tedious, and at times exasperating — but isn’t that the story of every good old house project?
Now, it’s one of the most beloved rooms in the house. Guests gravitate to it, and we do too — a space reclaimed from dust and critters, transformed into a place for slow mornings and end-of-day glasses of wine. The porch became more than a renovation. It became a ritual.
See our porch transformation on Instagram here!
The Front Porch as Fall’s Stage
If the screened-in porch belongs to spring and summer mornings, fall is when the front porch takes center stage. It’s the house’s face to the world — and nothing says the season has turned quite like swapping out tired summer pots for mums and pumpkins.
In early October, we take an annual trip to Gabrielsen’s Nursery for mums and a well-tread color debate unfolds (Sean votes bold orange, I flirt with white or yellow, but deep burgundy usually wins). The Boston ferns from summer hang on for dear life, still swaying like it’s July, while the sweet alyssum that overran our terracotta pots finally collapses in a heap of dried stems. Fall is the time for a reset.
This year, though, I’m bringing home more than mums. The longer we live on the North Fork, the more I learn that not every pretty plant truly belongs here. Mums, for all their fall charm, aren’t native — and local pollinators couldn’t care less about them. So alongside the porch display, I’ll be filling our back patio pots with native asters. It’s one small way of tending not just to our home, but to the land and its rhythms too. Thank you, Yard Crop, for the continuous education in gardening and native plants!
The Pumpkin Ritual (a.k.a. The Great Martha Stewart Rivalry)
But let’s be honest: no matter how thoughtful I get about plantings, the true drama belongs to Sean and his annual pumpkin scape. Every fall, he quietly stages an unspoken competition with Martha Stewart herself — one I’m certain she knows nothing about.
The hunt is half the ritual. We start at Krupski’s, where the variety is unmatched (and the haunted hayride is a bonus). Harbes is next — a fraught stop thanks to the weekend crowds, but Sean insists on the giant pumpkins only they can provide (often requiring a wagon to haul home). And then there are the countless roadside stands with their honor boxes, where “just one more” always seems to follow us back.
What begins innocently — just a few pumpkins gathered here and there — always snowballs. By the end of October, our “great pumpkin scape” has taken over: dozens cascading down the cedar steps, spilling onto the path like a river of orange and green, the porch practically groaning under their weight.
This year brings a twist: our very own accidental pumpkin patch. One especially plump beauty is ripening by the garden, and I’m crossing my fingers it survives the squirrels. If it does, it’ll sit front and center in Sean’s Martha-worthy display — proof that sometimes legacy plants itself, right in your own backyard.
Beyond the Porch: Where Ritual Meets Community
My mom recently mentioned a TV segment about services that will deliver and style your pumpkins for you — like Porch Pumpkins. I had to laugh.
For us, that would take all the joy out of it. The magic is in the hunt: supporting local farms, pulling over at roadside stands, and letting the porch shift week by week until it builds to full harvest drama.
And it doesn’t stop at our steps. Porch rituals spill into the community. Gabrielsen’s supplies our mums, Krupski’s and Harbes our pumpkins, but the anticipation belongs to the whole neighborhood.
Neighbors slow as they pass, curious to see what’s new. By Halloween, the porch isn’t just decoration — it’s a bit of community theater, and everyone’s waiting for the grand finale.
More Than Décor: Porches as Acts of Care
A porch is more than an entry — it’s a house’s handshake with the world. Dressing it for fall isn’t about showmanship; it’s about rhythm, tradition, and care. Mums, asters, pumpkins: these aren’t just seasonal props but small acts of stewardship. They say, “This house is alive, tended, loved.”
For us, the great pumpkin scape is both playful and profound. It’s a ritual that ties us to this place, this season, and the people who share it with us. Year after year, the repetition itself becomes meaning. These smallest traditions — stacked pumpkins, swapped pots, porch lights glowing — are what give a house its soul and weave its caretakers into the community around it.
From Our Porch to Yours
We’ll be kicking off our fall rituals this week — with this years mums and likely the first pumpkin (or two, or three…).
What about you? Do you have a fall porch ritual? Do you hunt for the great pumpkin too, or have your own traditions that mark the shift into autumn?
Share your stories in the comments — we’d love to hear them.
👉 Visiting the North Fork this season? Don’t miss our favorite spots: Krupski’s, Harbes, Gabrielsen’s
