RUSKIN - Dolly Cummings remembers the day three years ago when she turned up to help with the restoration of Ruskin's Marsh Creek Pond.
"I'm thinking I'm either going to be pulling out Brazilian peppers or cutting down Australian pines," Cummings said.
Instead, project leader Barbara Waddell directed her to pick up every rosary pea, which sprouts into an aggressive vine, she could find.
Cummings balked.
"Isn't that back breaking?" she asked.
Waddell insisted.
"I picked up like two bags of peas, and I was hunched over for a week," Cummings said. "I would never have gone to that length if she wasn't so insistent that this be done."
Cummings obviously harbors no hard feelings. She and other members of the Ruskin Community Development Foundation are raising money to install a memorial on a median along U.S. 41 for Waddell, who died in November.
Waddell helped establish the Pepper Patrol, a group of volunteers who seek and destroy non-native invasive plants - including Brazilian peppers - in south Hillsborough. Waddell also laid the groundwork for the county's Invasive Plant Species Task Force.
The memorial is part of the Ruskin foundation's landscape plans for all nine medians on U.S. 41 between 19th and College avenues. The designs were approved by the state Department of Transportation in 2002, and installation began last summer with the help of area businesses and organizations.
Dickman Realty, Southshore Landscaping, the Ruskin Women's Club and Camp Bayou have sponsored medians.
The Ruskin Community Development Foundation wants to raise $3,000 for Waddell's memorial on a median across from the Ruskin library. So far they've raised $300, said the foundation's treasurer, Sandy Council.
To contribute
Send donations for the median memorial to the Ruskin Community Development Foundation at 315 South Tamiami Trail, Ruskin, FL 33570. Attn: Barbara Waddell Memorial.
