Get up early Saturday to plant flowers in Geneva

It's supposed to be warm and sunny today - perfect weather to start cleaning up your yard.

But if you can spare an hour or so, take your trowel and rake to downtown Geneva to help make it more beautiful.

Starting at 8 a.m., the Geneva Beautification Committee will plant blue and yellow pansies in 40-plus beds, planters, curb knuckles and more.

Anyone can help. Meet in front of the Geneva Post Office at Third and James streets.

It's the first of three plantings for the year. The committee will replace the pansies with a variety of flowers and plants in May, and kale and mums in September.

The committee intends to transplant some 2,628 cold-weather-hardy pansies today.

"Our flowers are like icing on a cake," said Alderman Dorothy Flanagan, a co-chairman of the committee. The committee won a Governor's Home Town Award in 2007 for its work.

The committee decided this year to stick to only two colors of pansies, to simplify the work. They picked blue and yellow because those are the colors of the Swedish flag. Geneva is known for the Swedish background of many of its early residents.

The committee had a spaghetti dinner, "Pasta for Posies," in February and raised more than $4,000 to purchase plants.

"We're just really grateful to the Knights of Columbus for their generosity," Flanagan said. The Knights donated the hall and the labor for the dinner; all the committee had to supply was the food.

That's important, because the committee now has to buy plants. In the past, Geneva Greenhouse used to donate much of the materials, but it went out of business.