On April 24, 2021, the volunteers at the Raritan Valley Branch returned to the EB Butterfly Park to finish the remaining painting job and woodchip trail-paving job left from last visit. During the last visit, we had painted half of the benches, coated most of the entrance kiosk in red, and used half of the woodchips provided by the township paving the woodland trail. This time, we were back to complete all tasks.
With experiences from last time, volunteers got into positions and started working in no time.
Once again, we split up into a woodchip trail-paving group and a painting group. The volunteers working with woodchips picked up wheelbarrows, shovels and rakes from the community garden. Knowing the difficulty of using flat shovels to scoop up the woodchips, this time they raked woodchips onto the flat shovels or in a bucket first which were then unloaded into the wheelbarrows. Load after load of woodchips were transported and spread over the dirt path. Meanwhile the painting crew were busy with colors and designs. A sunset scene with soaring seagulls, a powerful thunderstorm view, and an uplifting color stripe pattern transformed the dull benches into newest attractions in the park. Red paint was applied to the top portion of the kiosk and fine drawings of butterflies, flowers, and bamboo were added onto the body of the kiosk.
Three straight hours of work under the hot sun in exchange for the newly renovated Butterfly Park was completely worth it. We couldn’t wait to see the surprise and excitement in park visitors’ eyes.
Volunteers: Benjamin Hong (3 hours), Tarun Sivakumar (3 hours) , Amy Xu (3 hours), Raymond Hu (3 hours), Xinning Lucy Liu (3 hours), Jessica Hong (3 hours), Kevin Xu (3 hours), Jason Liu (3 hours), Kevin Ho (2 hours), Kyle Xu (2 hours)
