Lake Placid Beautification Executive Director Cherise Bixler takes care of some pansies at the organization’s greenhouse Monday, May 4. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — A big flower pot — full of daffodils and gold, white and blue pansies — sits at the entrance to the Main Street parking lot by the post office. It’s inches away from a sign of the times: “STAY 6 FT APART; SOCIAL DISTANCING SAVES LIVES.”

Lake Placid Beautification Executive Director Cherise Bixler and her crew have been doing what their name says: beautifying the community with flowers.

It’s springtime, and that means spring cleaning. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the village’s annual cleanup day scheduled for May 16 was canceled. But volunteers in communities around the Olympic Region have been busy with their adopt-a-highway roadside cleanup duties.

People have also been cleaning up their yards and businesses. And flowers are starting to show up, lifting the spirits of community members when they need it the most, at this time of uncertainty while New York is on PAUSE.

Yet the beautifying must go on, even if Bixler isn’t working in her office at the North Elba Town Hall nowadays. She’s working at the greenhouse where she keeps the pansies and daffodils.

A pot of daffodils and pansies — planted by Lake Placid Beautification workers — sits next to a social distancing sign at the Main Street parking lot near the post office. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

The Lake Placid News caught up with Bixler Monday, May 4 at the greenhouse, using social distancing measures — keeping more than 6 feet apart during the interview and wearing masks before and after the interview. She gave us an update of the work she and her team are doing this spring.

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LPN: Please explain what Lake Placid Beautification does for the community.

Bixler: We are a not-for-profit that takes care of all of the plantings in the village of Lake Placid and that end of the town of North Elba. And we take care of a lot of the businesses, too. When you drive by The Bookstore Plus (for example), they have a pot in front. Gordon Pratt has a couple of hay baskets and a big pot. And then there are about 24 garden areas in Lake Placid that we plant, maintain, keep them weeded and mulched. We take care of all the hanging baskets in town. All the big pots next to the benches, those are all us.

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LPN: When you say plantings, what time of the year do you start? Do you swap out different plants at different times of the year?

Bixler: In March, we start with the cleaning out of the greens, which are then brown. And as soon as weather allows, I always shoot for the first of April, and Mother Nature says, “No, no, no. Wait for May,” we put out the pansies. And then the pansies stay in until June. Usually that first week of June, we start swapping out the pansies for the summer plants. And then those stay in until usually sometime in September when we put mums in the public areas. And then as soon as the weather says they’ve had enough, we switch to greens. So, in some locations, that means trees, and in other locations, such as the clock in the center of town, those just get greens, cut boughs.

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LPN: But you have daffodils out.

Bixler: We do. The president of my board of directors said that he wanted some height this year, and he wanted to try it. So we put them out, and they looked great until we had that really strong, horrible wind. … A thank you to Greg Peacock for the suggestion.

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LPN: What kind of feedback do you get from people?

Bixler: My crew will tell you that they never work a day without a compliment. It is a lot of times tourists because they don’t see it all the time, so they’re so impressed with it. But locals are always appreciative, too. We’ll be out watering or dead-heading or weeding and people will stop us. It’s what keeps us going on a day when it’s 30 degrees and we’d really rather be inside, but we still have to work out and get things done. This job is good for the soul. It’s just a very pleasing, very rewarding job, and we’re so grateful for all the support we get, both from the town and the village, the different departments that work with us that support us.

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LPN: Do you grow all your own flowers? Do you purchase flowers?

Bixler: Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space here to be able to start what we need. We have about 150 locations that we take care of, so there’s just no way that we can grow the plant material from scratch. So we do buy everything. We have a couple of different suppliers that we use, but Claussen’s out of Vermont is our main supplier.

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LPN: Tell me about the staff you have.

Bixler: We are doing the best we can to stay with the same state guidelines for county and village workers, so we’re working between quarter and half staff right now, depending on how we can rotate people through. Normally a water truck would have two people in it. We are only doing two people in a truck if those two people are from the same household. I am very lucky that parts of my staff are pairs of people anyway, so we are able to put them in a location where they can work closely and support each other without creating an issue. That’s one of the reasons you’ll see the reduced number of spring plants; we’re just trying to feel out how we’re going to be able to take care of them working with the reduced staff. … There are seven of us working right now with more that will come on later in the season as we start the garden work.

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LPN: With the lockdown during the pandemic, what are the biggest challenges for you? Is funding a big challenge?

Bixler: Every year is a challenge for us financially because our budget is so tight. All of the money that we have to work with comes in as donations, and we are very fortunate with some of the larger organizations that help, like Rotary Club, Lions Club, the American Legion, Uihlein Foundation. Those are all places that support us in a normal year, as well as the businesses in town. All of the businesses that we work with are so important to our financial success, and this year is … it makes me want to cry thinking about it. All of these businesses that are struggling anyway, I don’t know how I could possibly ask them for money, but I don’t know how we will make it through the year if I don’t.

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LPN: How can people help?

Bixler: Anyone who would like to support Lake Placid Beautification can send a check to Lake Placid Beautification, 2693 Main St., Suite 301, Lake Placid, NY 12946. That’s our office in the town hall. The very nice town clerk slides my mail out through the window to me once a week right now. Every penny counts for us, especially this year. This year is going to be really tough.