On October 26th, AYLUS volunteers were back again at Bethpage Park to help on cleaning up a garden. The volunteers all got to go on a golf cart ride across the range to arrive at the field. All volunteers were given various tools like gloves, safety glasses, clippers, hand saws and more. Majority of the volunteers went off to the side to continue on the work to restore the walls of the garden. They uprooted weeds and pulled out various types of vines which were killing the trees around. Members from the Dix Hills branch were given special tools for a different task. Instead of pulling vines and uprooting weeds they had to uproot trees. Many small trees had been found in the areas that fruits and vegetables were growing. The helpful staff on hand taught the proper technique to use the “tree lifter”, which was to use a tool that would clamp around the tree’s trunk. Then using a bit of force, pushing on the handle would enable the clamp to slowly pull the tree out of the dirt. The special tool made it much easier to uproot several trees found growing in the area. However some of the trees had been there a long time, and their roots were too vast to simply pull them out. ALYUS members had to resort to using hand saws to cut much taller trees down. At the end of the session, the two members were able to fill up an entire truck to the top with all the branches and trees they had sawed down. While on the other side, members did a great job at raking up leaves and clearing out unwanted vegetation to make the autumn colors around come to life.
Volunteers: Jake Wu (2.5hrs), Jonathan Fan (2hrs), Katlyn Cai (2hrs), Crystal Cai (2hrs)