Coming to readers from high on a tabletop, it's autumn décor time

Something – a jumbled mass of glittered red, orange, and yellow silk leaves, tiny pilgrims, papier-mache' pumpkins, and a turkey-shaped candle – had exploded on top of the dining room table. And someone, a person who is neurotically afraid of heights, was standing, shrieking with fear, on top of that table, among the debris of autumn décor. She had glitter on her head, thumbtacks clutched in her fist, and the sure sense that she was going to pitch forward, hard, onto the tabletop, directly onto that stupid wax turkey. Only a reflexive reach upward, with her flatted palm on the ceiling to steady herself, saved her from a certain face-plant and possible broken bones.

By the time her husband, having heard her banshee wail, reached the dining room, she had crawled off the tabletop and was standing shakily on the floor. What happened? her husband asked. When she explained, he simply regarded her for a moment before observing, “You know, sweetheart, any story that starts out with, “Well, I was standing on top of the dining room table...' never ends well.”

I never get glitter on my head or mess about with fat, wax turkeys (except Benjamin BadKitten)when I'm in my garden. Last week I decided to decorate our front porch and the inside of our house for autumn. Before I braved the dining room, I set up a fall display on the porch, with odd-shaped and uniquely colored gourds, pumpkins, dried corn, and silk leaves. Inside, our living room mantel looked fallishly festive, with my collection of wooden folk art set among miniature bouquets of silk flowers, all in autumn colors. I can reach the top of the mantel to decorate it. I don't even need a step-stool. But the next stop on the décor train was the dining room and its tall picture window.

Every fall, and again during Christmas, I attach seasonal garlands of leaves and flowers above that window. The garlands are long, stiff and unwieldy, and I am short, small, and not getting any younger. Every year, during the hanging of the garlands, I find my seasonal spirit severely tested. Last week, the dining room table seemed the ideal solution: It was the right height and wide enough to accommodate my balletic, garland-wrangling moves.

I maneuvered myself onto the table, reminded myself not to look down, and secured one end of the first garland to the drapery rod above the window. Just as the second garland settled into place, the first one slipped to the floor. (Imaginative readers may add their own colorful soundtrack to the next three attempts.)Maybe the Garden Goddess sensed my panic and floated inside to the rescue, because I finally managed to anchor both of those ornery sets of leaves, strands and flowers above the window – and then looked down. At least my tabletop panic attack happened after the garlands went up, because, nearly a week later, I'm still not jazzed about another ascent. When I considered the long, wide, L-shaped set of windows in our breakfast nook, I decided they could remain undecorated. I have stood on our kitchen table. Maybe, in late November, I might be willing to scale its heights to hang Christmas garlands above it. Maybe.

To forget the indoor décor drama, I spent a recent afternoon outside in our front yard, at Mini Leaf Mountain and Big Honker Leaf Mountain, the two mounds of oak and maple leaves my husband and I raked for our two young grandsons to jump into. Leaf Mountain Day has been a tradition at our house for three years, ever since our daughter, son-in-law and children moved to Moscow. A huge black maple tree stands in glory at a corner of our yard, and a sugar maple and towering oak tree blaze with color in our side yard.

The little boys, especially the eight-year-old, leaped and somersaulted into Big Honker, giggling, shouting and sending flurries of dry leaves fluttering onto their heads in the October sunshine. Our littler guy, age six, had to retire early from Mini Leaf Mountain and come inside with me for Band-aids, lemonade and cookies, after a sharp chunk of clay soil lodged in his rubber boot and tore a mean scratch in his leg. So both boys ended up decorating my beloved dollhouse for Halloween. They seemed skeptical at first, as if this might not be manly work, until they spied the miniature jack-o-lanterns, with scary, gross, disgusting faces, and they fell to with great enthusiasm.

When their dad had to leave early, we dealt with a dilemma. The little guy's sore leg made it impossible for him to wear his boots to walk home, I couldn't carry him for five blocks, and we have no child safety seats in our car. So I thought fast, and we ended up marching in our own pre-Halloween parade,with the eight-year-old on his scooter, and me pushing the six-year-old in my trusty green gardening wheelbarrow. We met several of my friends along the parade route, and each of them laughed. I could have told them that rolling my grandson home in a wheelbarrow beats the fear of falling from the top of the dining room table any day.