AYLUS volunteers joined together over the spring break on April 21st at Steppingstone Park to collaborate in helping park conservation efforts in their Great Neck community. Steppingstone Park is one of the coastal parks here in Great Neck that overlooks the Long Island Sound and is a great place for families to spend their time with the outdoor playground, the splendid view of the estuary (Long Island Sound), the ramp to launch boats, the open fields of grass, the blooming flowers that line pathways, along with many other facilities.
On this windy overcast day, 15 AYLUS volunteers met up to discuss their plan of action in clearing the weeds in the grass by the park’s flowerbeds. The weeds have unfortunately grown as a result of the piles of hay placed there in celebration of the festivities last autumn. Members worked on this beautification project for about two hours and a half despite the chilly weather before calling it quits and ended up filling two wheelbarrows with the extracted weeds. Both the humid weather conditions and the seemingly mundane task proved a challenge for the members as they chatted and hung out whilst using their gloves and their trowels to fully draw out both the plant and root portions of the weeds before batting away the dirt that stuck to the roots. With their original goals being: to clear out the weeds in the two surrounding patches of grass and filling up the two wheelbarrows they had brought along, everyone felt content with the work they had done to achieve both objectives.
The removal of these harmful new sprouts keeps the park well-kept and has improved the health of Steppingstone Park and made it a more welcoming place for all visitors. In addition to this project, AYLUS members hope to work on many others in the future that will serve the same unanimous goal of bettering our environment, starting here, in Great Neck.
The AYLUS members who participated in this week’s task are: Serena Chen (2.5hrs), Isabella Qian (2.5hrs), Catherine Tao (2.5hrs), Zhaoxi Chen (2.5hrs), Audree Chen (2.5hrs), Guo. Shaoyu (2.5hrs), Catherine Wang (2.5hrs), Derek Wang (2.5hrs), Guangqi Lu (2.5hrs), Xinyue Tan (2.5hrs), Cody Ngo (2.5hrs), Finley X. Chen (2.5hrs), Eden X. Chen (2.5hrs), Ankie Huang (2.5hrs), Maggie Xiao (2.5hrs)