Los Sures Gardening Reformation

By Anthony Ammirato

          I want to first start my reflection by talking about the project that I signed up for at the Los Sures Social Service Center for a second time the description was “Assist with indoor/outdoor gardening and helping with chickens, prepare to work in indoor/outdoor conditions and rain or shine.” The date that I went in on the second time was Friday, March 29th and it went a lot smoother than the last time for the fact that some people started inside by shredding cardboard boxes to be used for compost containers, but my group consisted of a woman named Anna and a guy I made friends with named Gerald. Essentially our goal was to dig out holes in a section of the garden to “transplant” some of the potted plants to help them grow over spring and summer seasons. Then once everyone finished, we all moved on to one project together that took all 6 of us.  They had garden beds in the outside area for food that they would grow for the chickens but unfortunately, it caused a rat problem so we had to move the garden beds and the dirt within them. This whole project reminded me of this quote from the Textbook  “Large areas of the Earth’s surface, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, have been used for agricultural production for millennia, yielding crops for ever-increasing numbers of people”  (Steger, 97).  Those gardens wouldn’t just help the chickens but it could provide food for the people within the social service center and an additional boost to those within the building so they can eat fresh natural healthy food. In terms of the way this project makes a difference, this kind of helps show a sense of interconnectedness and in my opinion sameness. According to the textbook “While optimistic globalizers agree with their pessimistic colleagues that cultural globalization generates more sameness, they nonetheless consider this pattern of sameness to be a good thing” (Steger, 88). I think the sameness in terms of wanting to pitch into a project that you are passionate about and the ability to also be open-minded by contributing your time towards it really shows how we all are trying to push for the same goal as New Yorkers to make our city a better place.

          I think that for this second part of the project, we got a lot accomplished not all of the flowerbeds were moved but we managed to get the frames of wood for them and fixed the broken parts of them. Even at that, we got all of the dirt from one of the flower beds and moved it to where we created the one I think we got what we set out to do accomplished. I was able to work with the team of 6, especially with the 3 (Gerald and Anna) to get our assignments completed as fast as possible and effectively as possible. We were doing what we could to help. I felt a better connection with the people that I because they were more my age and I wasn’t the only guy there. I had fun getting to know people from different places and different backgrounds. One person named  Gerald, said that he lived in Texas before moving to New York for a change of pace..

One last quote that I want to talk about in concerns to the ecological dimension of globalization. While gardening, I thought about how we impact society. There was a lot of litter near the social service center: garbage, cigarettes, wrappers, and rotten food discarded by the building next to the garden. According to the textbook “The ominous phenomenon of human-induced climate change has emerged as the major focus of domestic and intergovernmental policy as well as grassroots activism” (Steger, 101). Any thing we do, can have a small or long-lasting effect on the environment. Smoking cigarettes, for example, contributes to a person’s carbon footprint. We can all change our environment and world for the better through small actions. Now is a better time than ever to contribute and help others.

 Reference List

Steger, M. B. (2023). Globalization: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.