During the fieldwork, our contact was Michael Wasserman from the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. We went to the 3rd and 3rd garden in Brooklyn and got to work with grabber arms and bags. Our goal was to clean up the little forgotten garden as much as possible. As we arrived, we saw a common site in an urban environment: a little garden choked by trash. While it’s no great discovery, we found some moldy takeout chicken, some… questionable liquids, and plastics, a printer, a pot, coat hangers, and broken drink bottles. We were right next to a Cube Storage, so everyone just dumped their stuff. We even found clothes, and most surprisingly, a surplus of lotto tickets. It was disheartening to see what people so callously did. But the day was full of discoveries. We found two weird felty plants, and apparently in a pinch, hand sanitizer makes for dangerous mouthwash. (Long story.)We want to work with Gowanus more because there are many opportunities for volunteer work with them. I learned that I have a lot more endurance than I give myself credit for, as long as it is in a compact area. And I should also be more confident, because keeping up a conversation is not my forte. But more importantly, remember the beautiful private gardens in people’s houses that make you go ‘oooh’? This garden was supposed to be that for all of us. But because people threw their trash EVERYWHERE, nothing was beautiful. And remember that whenever, you feel lazy and throw stuff where they’re not supposed go, you give us one more reason why we can’t have nice things.
