“I started selling flowers,” Jozwiak recalled. “I don’t know how I ever got started doing that. And, eventually, I planted my garden across the street, and my whole yard with flowers. So then, I started selling them, and I had people sitting here on the cement, waiting for their turn for plants. Because they were a dollar a plant.”

She doesn’t sell them anymore, but her yard is a rainbow of blooms from May through September each year.

“I guess I had the most variety, people said,” she recalled of why they came to get flowers from her. “So, I was very happy with what I had.”

She gardens organically, feeding her plants with compost.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley White phlox in Blanche Jozwiak's Alpena garden.

“I use no fertilizer or bug killer,” Jozwiak said.

Jozwiak also grows all kinds of vegatables organically.

She has lived in Alpena her whole life, 62 of those years on Bingham Street in Alpena where she lives now. She is 87 years of age.

“I wouldn’t trade this place for nothin’,” Jozwiak said. “I love it here.”

News Photo by Darby Hinkley A yellow sunflower in Blanche Jozwiak's Alpena garden.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley Purple phlox in Blanche Jozwiak's Alpena garden.

News Photo by Darby Hinkley A pink dahlia in Blanche Jozwiak's Alpena garden.