The Aged Woman’s Home of Georgetown has long benefited from a volunteer group that every charitable organization dreams about having at their side. Since 1957, the creative, talented, and thoughtful members of The Town and Country Garden Club have provided and funded several annual events at the Home, including fall decorating. For 64 years, with the consistency of a rhythmically ticking orange clock, in early to mid-October several Garden Club members, emissaries from the larger group of Club members, descend upon the Home’s front steps bearing colorful mums, pumpkins, and hay bales to adorn the Home in celebration of Halloween and fall. (Read more about the Town and Country Garden Club here).
The annual appearance of these merry Halloween elves sets the Staff about the busy work of pulling down from the attic a plethora of previously donated decorations—mini non-scary-scarecrows and signs unabashedly calling for all of us to have a “Happy Fall” and proclaiming that “Autumn is Here!” Glass and plastic pumpkins of all colors, sizes, and shapes are unpacked, as is a black cat complete with fully arched back and extremely frightening (or frightened) expression. Now sitting regally in Halloween tradition on a table in the Home’s front hall, he or she looks protectively (or perhaps menacingly if you try to take too many) over a small bowl of candy corn. The bowl always seems to need to be refilled.
The Club does not rest long on its October decorating and funding laurels, for as soon as December arrives and the last pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving is eaten, a member calls to set up their decorating day for the Christmas Season, (usually the second Tuesday of December). Staff, assisted by Georgetown Prep volunteers, set up the Christmas Tree and lay out the ornaments in anticipation of this day. In mere hours, the Garden Club decks the Home’s halls and mantles using a different theme each year—a tour de force of creativity and organization that makes the Home beautiful for the enjoyment of all throughout the holiday season.
This fall season, with Covid restrictions still upon us, we used some of the funding provided by the Town and Country Garden Club to purchase a few mini hay bales (who does not love a mini hay bale with a pumpkin set upon it) and some fancy artistic carving pumpkins otherwise known as FunKins. These pumpkins are very fancy indeed—made of a hard plastic—you need a dremel tool to carve, so we thought we needed a real artist or two with some talent. Luckily for us we found a few who graciously carved our FunKins for us. These tough-as-nails pumpkins also have the advantage of being weatherproof and four-legged-friend-proof. With the fall decorations now up, and the coolness of fall rolling in, we remember the thrill of seeing a jack-o-lantern’s (or George-o-lantern’s) toothy grin in anticipation of All Hallow’s Eve. Our deep appreciation of our volunteers never gets old.
All the pumpkins in the images were carved by The Artists Republic and Roberta Marovelli Studios.
To top off our already full cup, the Home will be participating again this year in GivingTuesday on November 30, 2021. You can find our donation page here.
