By Richard Zagrzecki
As a garden assistant at the University of Houston, Syd Gonzalez’s hands have been full since day one.
Gonzalez happened to start the part-time student worker job on the day the campus reopened following Hurricane Harvey. The campus community garden – like much of the city – was severely impacted. Water had washed away most of the dirt in the growing beds. Most of the crops had died. What was left was one big soggy mess.
Fast forward six weeks, and things are looking up. Thanks to Gonzalez, as well as the other garden assistant and teams of volunteers, the garden once again has plenty of vegetables, legumes and other crops growing.
“We had to start all over again, which was fine because it is already the new season and we are starting to plant fall crops,” Gonzalez said. “It is looking good. If you walk by there, things are sprouting. Some of the greens we can start harvesting soon.”
The garden assistant job seemed like a perfect fit for the Houston native, who has always had an interest in plants and gardening, and who currently serves as the vice president of the Horticulture Society at UH. But it is also a far cry from Gonzalez’s ultimate career goal of becoming a forensic scientist.
The junior anthropology major plans to seek a master’s degree in forensic anthropology at Texas State University after graduating from UH in the spring of 2019. The program at Texas State includes a body farm, at which students conduct varying experiments using cadavers of people who donated their bodies to science.
“I know one professor there I really would like to work under. She and her students volunteer their time to identifying and finding the cause of death of immigrants on the Mexico-Texas border who have died in their journey here,” Gonzalez said. “That is something that really interests me.”
Another passion that Gonzalez enjoys is embroidery.
“My sister took a fiber arts class and she told me how fun it is and that we should do it together. I was like OK, that sounds interesting,” said Gonzalez, who now sells finished products to customers as far away as Paris online via the e-commerce website Etsy.
Although there are a lot of things to love about UH, the most favorite thing for Gonzalez has to be the squirrels.
“I really would love for someone to do a documentary on the UH squirrels. There is a serious difference in the squirrels you see here and the squirrels you see elsewhere,” Gonzalez said. “Here, the squirrels are like, ‘I am going to go right up to you while you are eating your lunch and steal your food.’ “
Although they are cute, the squirrels can cause trouble for the community garden, especially with the pomegranate tree that will soon be producing fully mature fruit. They have two ideas in mind to help keep the squirrels away. One involves using clear plastic empty strawberry containers that can close over the fruit and snap shut.
The other involves a more unconventional method.
“Alex (the other garden assistant), her dad is an animal trapper who is going to give us mountain lion urine so we can throw that on the pomegranate tree and ward off the squirrels,” Gonzalez said.