LAKEVIEW — Doris Foster loves old bicycles and pretty flowers. She displays both of them in her front yard on the Fredonia Road about three miles north of Lanett.

“We like living in the country,” she said, “but that’s a busy road in front of our house. People sometimes stop in the road to see the flower bed and what’s in the basket on front of the bicycle.”

Doris is the wife of Herschel Foster, who owns a car lot in the local area. She’s originally from Moultrie, Georgia, where the soil is a lot easier to work with than it is in Chambers County.

“It’s loose soil, and you can grow almost anything in it,” she said. “The soil here is rocky, and is harder to work with. I love azaleas, and we’d have lots of them if we had softer soil.”

Doris got one of her two bikes from a yard sale on Highway 50 in Huguley; the other one was given to her by her son, Dion Croft, who lives in Moultrie.

“When I saw that bicycle at the yard sale I knew it would be perfect for my flower bed,” Foster said.

The bike her son gave her is part of a rustic setting on the side of their yard. There’s a couple of old gas cans in front of it to give it an old-fashioned country feel. There’s a type of petunia known as Ruellia growing there alongside a section of white picket fence. An old timey wash tub is hanging off the fence, and the flowers growing out of it almost reach the ground. On the opposite site of the bicycle is an old metal chair with a large potted plant sitting on it.

Foster loves to grow petunias and clematis, especially the red ones. “I’d love to have some roses,” she said. “We started some hydrangeas this year. We like what they’ve done so far.”

She also loves the wind chimes on her front porch and the sounds they make when there’s a gentle breeze. There are two signs on the front porch that greet friends and relatives when they arrive. One says “WELCOME!” and the other has an image of a big rooster and says “The Roost.” There’s also a small black bell with a cowboy riding a bucking horse on the top.

“We work hard to have our yard looking nice,” she said. “We want to make a good impression on people as they drive by, and that’s a really busy road out there.”

People who drive up and down Fredonia Road often glance over to admire the hard work and creativity that make the Foster yard a nice place to look at.