There’s nothing like Autumn in the wine country. Crisp, cool air, vineyards filled with harvest workers, soft warm sweaters, the drizzle of rain and the anticipaiton of the first cozy fire in the wood stove.

It’s also the time we bring out the scarecrow.

I made him using an old pair of overalls, when overalls were still being sold as fashionable. His legs are filled with a long piece of scrap foam-rubber folded in half and stuffed into my husband’s thrown-out work boots. His torso is a pillow and an old, orange life-vest inside a flannel shirt I confiscated from my husband’s closet. His head is a pillowcase filled with plastic grocery bags and his eyes are black coat buttons, and another long button for his nose. His straw hat is sewn on. I used a beefy but bendable wire threaded through the shirt to create his bending arms. One which waves with the breeze and one that is secured to the mailbox. I tucked some straw into the appropriate places and finished him off with some faux oak leaves.

We enjoy bringing him down from his year-long home in the barn and wheeling him down the driveway in the wheelbarrow to his seasonal perch at the entrance to our property. These photos are a few years old, and now I have a black crow that is wired to his shoulder. We live just over a small hill and our scarecrow still makes my heart skip a beat at night when I crest the hill and my headlights hit him. We’ll be bringing him out the fist week of October, because nothing says welcome to Autumn to me more than him.