It’s amazing how something as simple as a bunch of secondhand wreaths can reap rewards to those who decorate them for others and joy to those who receive them.

The wreath project is a community service that evolved from a daughter’s gift last year to her mother who is in a nursing home. Last year Carol Patterson, president of the Fannie Marchman Garden Club in Mineola said she made a decorated wreath for her mother, Nola Emerson, at Mineola Healthcare Residence and for other residents on the same hall.

“So the other residents began asking me, where’s ours,” Patterson said good-naturedly. Well, after last Monday and a very messy decorating session in the sun room with help from other garden club members, the other residents’ doors are also now beautified with wreaths.

The wreaths aren’t just simple circles of artificial greenery with a few red bows tied on. The residents’ tastes, things they like and interests were taken into account.

Like any gift, it’s hard to tell who gets the biggest benefit, the recipients or the givers. Last Monday Patterson, Rosemarie Kastrau and Lynn Astumian were busy like bees with their beautiful creations. “I’m in charge of fluffing,” Astumian said. Kastrau was deftly weaving decorative ribbon through the greenery as she spoke of the quest to gather that many wreaths. Also lending a hand were club members Charla Martin, Beverly Chamberlain and Kathy Duncan. Boxes of decorations covered every possible surface in the room.

It was a large scale mess for a large scale project. They had gathered what wreaths they could throughout the year, while they gained many from the big Salvation Army sale in Tyler where they waited in line and the rain to go in. Their goal was to have a wreath on every one of the about 40 residents’ doors, as well as on those of the staff and ultimately, on doors of rooms where there may be move-ins during the season.

Patterson took a break from the work session to give a tour of the halls where the doors were already decorated. Along the tour a sweet-faced elderly woman, Mary Winkle, was making her way in a wheelchair slowly down the hall to her room so Patterson, without missing a beat, offered “a lift” pushing her along on the tour.

The chat and tour continued, as Patterson pointed out one resident’s door where a wreath with decorations of vibrant fuchsia and purple hung. Those were “her colors,” Patterson said. “They’re beautiful,” Winkle added. “Awe for awesome.”

Then the tour arrived at Winkle’s door where, among other things, her wreath was embellished with a large angel figurine. Patterson shared that Winkle had lost her 97-year-old mother about this time last year; their rooms were next to each other’s. And Winkle told why the angel on the wreath was significant to her, saying that when her mother died, an angel had been placed upon her mother’s casket. And with that memory, she peered up at the wreath hanging on her door with a trace of a smile on her face.