The Times

Donna Hair sits at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Colonial Drive, amid the flowers she and a neighbor planted. Photo by Kay Severinsen

They planted and grubbed, but they can't get respect

By KAY SEVERINSEN, Staff Writer It seems some people just don't like other people doing something nice for them. For every pile of trash that Donna Hair and Mid Nanowsky picked up from the intersection of U.S. 1 and Colonial Drive, party-goers threw more bottles and trash. The flowers and palms they planted were stolen or run over, people threw things at the two workers and yelled obscenities at them. But in spite of it all, Donna and Mid really enjoyed their pet project and have no plans to abandon it. Every week or so, they donned grubby work clothes, armed themselves with rakes, spades and hoes and cleaned up the intersection. Their project began nearly two years ago, when the Palmetto Garden Club, to which Mrs. Hair belongs, decided to clean up the intersection. Florida East Coast railroad tracks lie about 50 feet west of U.S. 1, and the club began by mowing the thick high grass around the tracks. "It was as high as my head," Mrs. Hair recalls. The garden club then asked FEC if it could plant flowers along the tracks but ran into too much red tape. "The plants could only be as high as your knee, no matter about the weeds we cut down," Mrs. Hair says. After that, the club's involvement kind of "fizzled out" Mrs. Hair says, but her own interest didn't. "Mid and I decided to make it our own project, just to go out and then for an hour. It was good exercise and made us feel good." At first the project was really dirty work. "We pulled weeds, picked up bottles and garbage. The first time we had a real mountain of crud," she laughs. "Now it's not nearly as bad, but people still leave bottles there after a weekend." They bought about $30 worth of flowers to plant at the corner, before another neighbor, Warren Louvell, donated as many flowers as they could use from his nursery. "We tried to plant flowers in red, white and blue," Mrs. Hair says. "But we have also planted yellow flowers and wandering jews." They even planted palm seedlings from their own back yards, until "one day when I was working out there a man stopped at the light, pulled up every palm and stuck them in his car. When I yelled at him, he yelled an obscenity at me and drove away. There went all our palms." People also dug up almost all of the flowers, Mrs. Hair said, and the ones that weren't dug up were run over by cars. "It looked deliberate, the tire tracks went back and forth," she adds ruefully. "It was really a disappointment to us, we feel like that place is our own back yard." In spite of these disappointments, Mrs. Hair and Mrs. Nanowsky plan to plant flowers again next spring. "It's the entrance to our neighborhood. It's a shame to have all that trash," Mrs. Hair said. Why did Mrs. Hair undertake such a project? Growing up in Canada, she says she learned to take care of things properly. "My parents always made us spend 15 minutes picking up a picnic site. In school in British Columbia, each grade school class spends a half hour a month picking up trash at a public area."

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