FERRIDAY — If at first your plans are dampened by rain, try, try again.

A citywide cleanup was scheduled for Ferriday last Saturday, but rain and otherwise nasty weather forced organizers to cancel.

That’s not keeping them down, though, and they’re going to be back on the streets again, preparing the town for the cleanest city contest.

The district judging for the contest will be April 1.

“We actually had some people show up for the cleanup last week, but we told them we were going to have to reschedule,” Ferriday Garden Club member Lena Bateman said.

Since the garden club entered the town in the cleanest city contest last fall, members of the garden club, the town and members of the general public have joined together to clean up the city.

The plans for Saturday’s goings-on are essentially the same as they were March 14.

Everyone who wants to help will meet at 9 a.m. at the railroad depot park near the post office on First Street.

The group will break into two crews and will do everything from pick up trash, trim bushes and shrubs, edge sidewalks and pick up small limbs, Bateman said.

“They need to bring their own tools — Weed-eaters, clippers, garden hoses, rakes, shovels,” Bateman said.

“We need whatever they have got.”

Over the next two weeks, the group will continue their efforts, and the cleanest city judges will be in Ferriday at 10:15 a.m. on April 1.

After a reception, the officials will be taken on a pre-determined route through town, though they have the option of telling contest members to take the judges anywhere the judges want to go in town, Bateman said.

One part of the contest is a scrapbook prepared by the club to show what the town looked like before the cleanup effort.

“They will know what it looked like before, and then they will go out and see the after,” Bateman said.

Regardless of the contest results, the cleanup efforts will make difference, Bateman said.

“This is not going to stop on April 1,” she said. “We hope to keep it up.”