Margery Arthur peeped out her door and watched young ladies kneeling in her front yard, their hands busily smoothing soil around newly planted marigolds and ageratum and red salvia.

“I used to do that,” she said. “I can’t anymore.”

And that was precisely the point: What the elderly and frail Arthur can no longer do for herself, some of her neighbors are willing to do for her.

A small army from the Ironton Catholic Community spent Thursday performing odd jobs for their elderly and ill neighbors. They washed windows, pulled weeds, painted, cleaned gutters and performed tasks that might have been left undone otherwise.

Ruth Hopkins enlisted the whole family in the church project. Her daughter, Ivie, who is 8, went with her to Arthur’s house. Other family members were scattered at other homes. The Hopkins’ had never met Margery Arthur before Thursday. But they opted not to stand on ceremony and roll up their sleeves for the cause.

“It was just time to give back,” Ruth Hopkins said. “We have received so much it was just time to give back.”

Jane Rudmann, director of religious education for the Catholic community, said this is the second year the church has undertaken such a project.

“The diocese does something similar to this and they sent us fliers. We started talking about taking some of the kids and going to where other people in the diocese were working and then we got to thinking that there are people here who need help,” Rudmann said.

“So we put an announcement in the bulletin asking for people to sign up to work and asking if anyone needed to have work done. Some of the people we helped last year wouldn’t call us again because they thought we had done so much for them last year and I had to call them this year,” she said.

Workers will go to additional homes Saturday. More than 40 young people and adults signed up for the two-day clean up.