WEST, Texas (KXAN) – The petals of Ellen Wilson’s purple irises had turned brown over the weekend. She clipped them from their stem and tossed them into a cardboard box at her feet.

“I’m just cutting the dead ones off,” said Wilson, a West grandmother whose home was in the zone of the fertilizer plant explosion that left at least 14 dead and some 200 injured. “I can’t do anything in the house, because there’s so much glass.”

Behind her, the old house along one of the side streets in West showed evidence of last week’s devastation. The blast knocked all but two of her windows out and bent the tops of her flowers.

• Photos: Reclaiming West after the blast

“I thought the house had exploded. It was just like a bomb had hit,” Wilson said. “We had one piece of glass that was  — just stuck into the wall.”

The bustle of yard work on Monday was a sure sign of the progress this neighborhood was making. Wilson was among the first to return on the outer edge of the blast zone.

Down the street, Charlie Ferguson fired up his lawnmower, carefully looking for glass as he clipped the grass. His windows were gone, too.

“The lights blinked off and on, and then all of a sudden the whole house shook,” said Ferguson.

He recalled the morning before the explosion, speaking to four of the firefighters who died. Ferguson was not hurt, but he said the emotional pain will linger.

“You never know what’s waiting,” he said.

Wilson’s oldest granddaughter lost a friend that day, and her youngest granddaughter’s friend lost her house during the fire.

“The flowers have really been pretty this year,” she smiled, wiping her forehead, knowing – just like this town – they are bound to be beautiful again.

“Just got to water them occasionally,” she chuckled. “A lot of care. Texans can pull together.”