Pumpkin Parade Party 10/21 Serves 39!

This past Saturday’s Memory Café in the Garden, 10am – 12pm, served a total of 39 people – our biggest gathering to date. In addition to our usual wheelchair-accessible Open Garden offering, we hosted a Pumpkin Parade Party. The party included offering small, medium, and large-size pumpkins for painting with oil-based paint markers, and decorating with glue dots, foam cut-outs, and colorful pipe-cleaners. A six-foot long table offered a few more refreshments than usual (usual is water and coffee). At this event we offered taste-testing with a nod to the “3 Sisters” of Native American Tradition (squash, beans, and corn): salted roasted pumpkin seeds 6-ways, 3 hummus spreads with crudités and pita bread, 4 flavors of popped corn, corn and veggie chips, crunchy kale 6-ways, gluten-free pumpkin-chip muffins, traditional salty crackers, artisan cheeses, grapes, a candy buffet, and apple cider… which attracted lots of yellow-jackets! Next time, we’re thinking single-serve cups may be better.
Four Northeast Arc (NE ARC) group homes attended (Gloucester, Topsfield, Burlington, and Danvers), totaling twenty-four residents (12) and staff (12). Fifteen additional individuals, couples, and families joined the fun. Thanks to Giulia Finazzo, a Resident Assistant from the Gloucester NE ARC Group Home, for the idea,“Maybe in October, we can bring a pumpkin to paint”….
Our final Memory Café in the Garden is this Saturday, 10/28, 10am – 12pm. Walk-ins, wheel-ins welcome. Your RSVP is appreciated, as we have limited parking.
Moving forward with a listening heart,
vision, inquiry, and action,
~ Mary