The temperature is well below freezing, but after delaying because of weather before, these students were eager to get out and do good work, no matter what Mother Nature said.

Students from Elizabethton High School’s Key Club and FFA pulled up to the Ivy Hall Nursing Home in the middle of the afternoon Thursday, bringing with them a pick-up full of soil and several raised wooden boxes, creating raised flower beds that would not wash away with the weather.

Kaylee Bowers, a senior and president of the school’s Key Club, said they originally meant to do the project in December, but the weather forced the students to reschedule.

“We wanted to find a way to help older citizens,” Bowers said.

She said the group of students normally visit the nursing home during Christmas time to meet some of the residents and spend time with them.

“Some residents do not get a lot of visitors,” she said.

The idea to create flower beds came around during their application to a Live to Serve grant they applied for with FFA, a youth organization dedicated to promoting agricultural education across the country.

Bowers said the Key Club received between $1,200 and $1,500 for use in a community-benefiting project, and the group decided on flower beds.

Because the flowers were meant for the residents themselves, Bowers said they actually went around the nursing home, asking residents what kinds of flowers they wanted to see in the flower beds. The results included roses, daisies and many others.

Carrie Lykins, an agriculture teacher at EHS, said people can see the long-term benefits of the grant by watching these students work.

“These students are spending their day in 20-degree weather to do this,” Lykins said. “This helps students and the community get involved, because when people walk by and see the flower beds, they can see the community helping the community.”

For the Key Club, this project will not be a one-and-done deal, however. The club plans to plant new flowers as the seasons change.

“When it gets warm, we will come back,” Bowers said.