Landscaping for Halloween/Autumn

We moved to our new house back in 2014. The old house was an open canvas when I bought it. No trees or even plants in the front yard so I landscaped with Halloween in mind. When we moved in 2014, this was a house built in 1944 and had a good deal of landscaping already here....none of it screamed Halloween or Autumn with the exception of the giant old Sugar Maple in the front yard:

My wife and I had been going round and round the last few years about what to plant in our front yard. As we live LITERALLY in the heart of our town, she wants to keep it classy over creepy. So no Black Tulips or Willow trees in the front. I did get a good start on a Wicked Willow ( also known as a Japanes willow or curly willow) in the back yard and it can be propagated via cuttings once it get bigger:

As it grows larger, the limbs become twisted and more contorted and can be cut and dried for arrangements, walking sticks, props etc.

As luck would have it, they just put in a new GREEN BELT in front of our home...literally in front. This green belt circles the park and almost the whole of down town for people to bike, walk, run etc on a nice big path around the park and town. The town just landscaped and put 3 Autumn Brilliance Service Berries in our front yard for free!

For those not familiar with the Autumn Brilliance Service Berry, it is a tree that grows between 15 and 25 foot high. Often called the 4 season tree or the All Season Tree, it has something to offer year round. in Winter, it has silvery bark which stands out well with the bleakness of winter. In Spring it has large cloud like white flowers all over it :

In Summer it gets emerald green spear shaped leaves and edible berries that can be made into jams or backed in a pie!

The best part of the Autumn Brilliance Service Berry is what it does in the Fall....Like it's namesake, it is Brilliant in Autumn:

And to think. there are 44 of these babies lining our street in front of my house. One day the Trick Or Treaters will be walking under a canopy of Autumn Brilliance as they try to make there way to Meade Manor and the terrors that dwell within! I cannot wait!

The Wicked Woods Cemetery Yard Haunt Video of 2016

Enjoy!

The Wicked Woods Cemetery invades local Elementary School

I had been asked by one of our good friends to help put in a "Haunted House" at the elementary school's Fall Festival November 5th. Of course I could not say no to a friend so I made plans to do this in a terribly tiny window of time. When we broke down our yard haunt, I set aside several of our better props for transport. It delayed us putting everything up, but it was worth it. It tooks me and M about 2 hours to load everything we needed to take with us Friday night. We drove about 15 miles down the road  on a 4 lane highway with a truck load of coffins and skeletons, but we made it safe and sound. We started actually putting things out at 8:30 that night and we ended up working until 1:30 in the morning. I headed back at 1pm Saturday morning which gave me a solid 4 hours to do last minute adjustments.

Luckily the black plastic had been hung up 75% by the time we got there. All in all we worked 8 hours setting it up and we supplied all the props, decorations and costumes. It was officially on from 5pm till 8pm. We were working with a 50 foot hall which we broke down into 4 rooms.  A witch's shack was room one, manned by my lovely wife, a cornfield, a haunted funeral parlor, and a cemetery to lead them out. Unfortunately nobody got a picture of me in my grim reaper duds but I was the last guy to "run them out" and they were falling over each other trying to get out! We had a lot of crying kids...even had a few screaming adults! There were several repeat customers as well. It was a lot of fun and we broke everything down in under 2 hours and got it back home.....now to put it all up!

The skeleton hiding in the leaves of the grave yard!

The Grave Yard

Our chained werewolf running loose in the corn field!

Our ghost lurking in the haunted funeral parlor 

M manning the witch room!

The corn field

 

Halloween Night in The Wicked Woods

We had a record breaking number of kids. Unfortunately M was late getting home to do our makeups and I went sideways on keeping a totally accurate headcount because the kids started coming at 4:30 and they did not stop until almost 9:30.

 Thankfully my mother came right over to help hand out candy. We had three 5 gallon tubs of random mixed candy and toys made up and enough spare candy to fill the tubs a total of 10 times!  I told my mom to give each kid a handful. Mom is pretty consistent too so I feel they all got about the same. When I started conting early, I got to 151 when mom called for another tub. That threw me off while I ran and got it but I was around the 300 count mark when she asked for the next and so on and so forth. By my estimate, each tub services 150 kids. We were down to bottom of tub 10 at 9:15 when the last TOT showed up. Looks like 1500 kids to me!

Besides mom, I had some help in the haunting department as well. My Goddaughter wanted to go as a broken doll and see if she could scare kids... and boy did she ever. She was about the same size as most of the other props and people kept wanting to touch her to see if she was real...and then she would get them! She was awesome! 

Of course the Lady of the Manor was out chasing children, eating brains, and sending live feeds to Twitter and Facebook all night. She did great!

M had worked all day and was pretty "dead" by the end of the night.

She was hungry too so she got herself a snack.

I grabbed a snack as well! (Gizmo)

Nom nom nom

I also had a little desert! (Lily)

M caught one of the minions of Meade Manor (Eduth) being part of the Deathday party.

A passerby sent us this picture of the elusive Sam becoming part of the Killer Kitchen Scene.

 This morning I got up at 7:45am and started breaking down the outside decorations. By 7pm the only signs of Halloween were several coffin and corpse shaped dead spots in the grass, a huge pile of ice on the curb from the Fog Chillers, and the yard, road, and sidewalks littered with spilled candy!

It was kind of sad this evening when the sun went down and we did not have the usual blue green lights shining through the windows... oh well..I do have some good news though!