It's noontime and the sun beats down as Olenka Gadzik kneels by a narrow strip of ground between the sidewalk and a parking lot on Davenport's West 2nd Street.

It's her lunch hour and - dressed in her legal assistant outfit that includes slacks, heeled dress shoes and earrings - Gadzik begins digging in the dirt with a trowel, preparing to plant one of several tomato seedlings and pink flowering petunias that she has brought along in a box.

She is engaging in a version of "guerrilla gardening."

Without asking anyone's permission, she is taking it upon herself to plant, in public spaces, flowers that beautify and vegetables that will yield food for people to eat.

It's her mildly subversive way of making the world a better place.

"When you have beautiful things, it affects you in a positive way," the widely known Quad-City artist and musician says. "When you have ugly things, well, it affects you in a negative way."

The term guerrilla gardening dates to the 1970s when a group of people in New York City planted a vegetable garden in a derelict private lot. Nowadays, there are Web sites devoted to the practice along with tips and examples of plantings throughout the world.

Gadzik's first activity was about two weeks ago when she planted some 22 tomatoes in the boulevard between Scott Street and Western Avenue, positioning them in the mulched bed between lilac bushes that is owned by the Eastern Iowa Community College District, or EICCD.

She poked into the ground next to the plants small signs that read, "Please take some when ripe." There's also a quote from former college professor and counterculture author Wendell Berry that reads, "The Earth is what we all have in common."

The seedlings were "volunteers" that sprouted in Gadzik's own Davenport garden this spring from seeds that fell from the fruit last fall. She let them grow as long as she could before they began interfering with this year's produce and then dug them up for her guerrilla plantings.

She scouted 2nd Street for optimum locations and decided on the boulevard west of Scott Street because it is an area where, as Gadzik says, "the

(DavenportOne flower) planters stop and it gets to looking a little neglected."

As she planted on a hot weekday afternoon, she also pulled out some weedy thistles growing in the lilacs. Weeds make an area "look abandoned - it looks like urban blight," she says. "And that affects people."

Gadzik left the lamb's quarters, though, because that's a good, edible plant, she says.

The tomatoes she planted this time are replacements for those that didn't survive after her first planting, and the petunias are going in a spot where a lilac bush was cut down to a stump.

Another tomato planting in Bechtel Park will need to be replenished, too, since it was torn up by critters. Next time, Gadzik says, she will bring chicken wire to protect the plants.

What property owners think

What do the owners of the properties think about her unsolicited gardening?

Representatives from both the college district and DavenportOne, which owns Bechtel Park along with Rejuvenate Davenport Inc., said they would have preferred that Gadzik had asked for permission.

They added, though, that they will allow the plantings to stand unless they grow unsightly or cause a problem in some way.

"As long as it does not become unsightly, we'll let it go this year," said Tom Flaherty, senior vice president for community growth with DavenportOne.

Julie Plummer of the EICCD said the college district does not think of its groomed and mulched lilac bed as a "neglected, orphaned land" - the sort of place typically targeted by guerrilla gardeners. "We wonder why our area was chosen over the many truly neglected and un-beautiful spots in the downtown area," she added.

She also said the college district is involved in sustainable activities and embraces the idea of community gardening. "Had (we) been made aware beforehand, we would have gladly partnered on the project," she said. "EICCD values the gesture of community beautification and providing homegrown veggies to the underserved downtown population."

Inspiration came from close by

Coincidentally, Gadzik drew inspiration for her plantings from DavenportOne's Flaherty who, in his previous job as parking manager for the city of Davenport, planted tomatoes in a small triangle of land in front of the Design Center and parking office on East 2nd Street.

When the tomatoes were ripe, he picked them and put them in a bowl with a sign inviting people to help themselves.

Gadzik also draws inspiration from American Indian poet, musician and activist John Trudell.

Trudell speaks about developing allegiance to our descendants and taking care of the planet so there will be something left for the people who will come after us.

If we wait to find solutions in conventional ways, it might be too late, Gadzik says.