2013 Pumpkins for a Cure Festival Has Something for Everyone

The 2013 Pumpkins For A Cure Festival is coming up Saturday, Sept. 28, and this year's festival has something for everyone!

Visitors will arrive at the Geneva Courthouse, where they will be greeted by a cascade of bright, colorful mums and exotic pumpkins for sale. This year the festival will feature jack-o-lanterns, but will feature specialty pumpkins such as Cinderella’s, Lunch Lady’s, Fairy Tales (Dark green pumpkins) and White pumpkins, as well. You’ll be able to see all these unusual and new varieties on the courthouse lawn on South Third Street.

The mum garden has added a variety of fall plants to help complete your fall garden. Late blooming hearty mums are the featured plants, but there will also be cabbages, kale and a few surprises.

The 2013 schedule of events features Carol Steven’s Macaroni Soup, a petting zoo, Halloween Carriage ride, FREE hot dogs from Fifth Third Bank, Professional pumpkin carver Marc Solomon, story time featuring Queen Meadowyn and Ruby Rus reading Owl Moon, the Stillman Nature Preserve will have an owl demonstration, face painting and scarecrow on stilts.

"All of these events are a great reason to attend the Pumpkins For a Cure Festival, but a more important reason is how the money we raise will be used," said co-founder Mary Agnes Zellmer. "This year we will give one research grant to the University of Chicago Kovler Diabetes Center. We will also give two education grants, the recipients will  to the Chicago office of the American Diabetes Association."

A second grant this year to the University of Illinois Chicago Pediatric Brain Disorders Clinic.

"Being able to fund a large research project couldn’t’ happen without support from the community," Zellmer said. "We are so grateful, and thankful for the support we’ve received over the past eight years."