This year has been challenging for the MidCounty Senior Center, which closed in mid-March to slow the spread of the contagious coronavirus COVID-19.
Cindy Kiernan is ready for customers at the MCSC Lavender Ladies parking lot sale. • Photo Credit: Jondi Gumz
The senior center, at 829 Bay Ave., Capitola, offered more than a dozen activities from bridge and canasta to folk dancing, ping pong and photography, for people age 50 and up.
Older people are more at risk for complications from the new coronavirus.
The MidCounty Senior Center Garden has remained open, allowing members to work outside — where the virus is less likely to spread — and grow fruit, vegetables, and plants such as lavender.
MidCounty Senior Center Lavender Ladies hosted a sale in the parking lot Sept. 12 and planned another sale outdoors Sunday, Oct. 4, at the Portola Farmer’s Market in Live Oak.
“We are 100% nonprofit, supporting the senior center,” said Cindy Kiernan of the MCSC Lavender Ladies. “The Senior Center is in danger of closing. They need $45,000 to reopen following the impacts of COVID-19.”
She added, “The lavender we use in our products comes from the plants grown in the garden as well as donations from people with plants locally.”
New at the Oct. 4 sale was bowl cozies, masks, Jeweled sachets, lavender oil and tooth fairy pillows. Old favorites returning, Kiernan said, are eye pillows, hanging sachets, small throw bags, cooking lavender, cooking sugar, and Bath Salts and Sugar Scrub (appropriately colored, of course).