Throwback Thursday

For those of you “not in the know”, #TBT stands for “Throwback Thursdays”. We celebrate this day of the week with a re-telling of one of the classic breakfast club jokes from days gone by. Today was the “Hare Spray” joke…

“A woman was driving through a neighborhood in Atlanta (Buckhead) when she accidently hit a little bunny rabbit with her car. She immediately stopped the car and was weeping by the side of the road over the little body when another woman stopped to help. The assisting woman reached into her bag and pulled out a spray can, gave the bunny a couple sprays from the can, and the bunny revived! As the little fella hopped off, he would stop and wave at the women! The driver of the car grabbed the can to see what it was and was surprised to see that it was “Hair Spray: Guaranteed to Revive Dead Hair! Also Adds Permanent Wave”“

Today we will enjoy classes in the rain. The forecast is for cloudy skies and a 60% chance of rain… usually that means it will rain in the afternoon but as I write this the rain is falling at a steady rate. We are stomping through mud puddles, playing ultimate foam in tennis, and swimming in the rain. It is a ton of fun to do regular classes in the rain…we might get this opportunity both today and tomorrow (similar forecast on both days)!

I will be checking out the garden/farm program area today. This brand new facility is located in my back yard! A chicken coop, a little rabbit barn, 12 raised beds as a garden, and 150 blueberry bushes. The raised beds are planted with melons, vegetables, berries, and herbs. Our house provides a wonderful place for this class to meet on rainy days like today (the girls will use our kitchen, the porch, and our bathrooms) and the skills they learn will be significant. It is SO CUTE seeing the girls work the garden and start their personal worm farms. The will learn all about composting and how to make a garden grow. Good fun (especially excited about the rabbits and chickens who are VERY FRIENDLY).

Greystone is making a major effort to go green this year. We have started a “zero waste initiative” in an effort to virtually eliminate our contribution to the land fill. Last summer we sent about two tons of trash to the land fill every day. This summer we hope to send only fifty pounds of trash every day! How do we do it? We separate all garbage into three basic categories:

Compost (this we mix with the horse manure and compost at camp, using the compost to put on our planting beds and pastures).
Recycling
Land fill (very little can not be recycled or composted… wrappers and some plastic things are the biggest component).
We also collect batteries (which we send to a separate recycler) and light bulbs.

Things I have learned:

There is a learning curve… we don’t know what the definition of trash is!
It is expensive (at least for us)… we bought compostable everything (much more expensive than plastic), replaced every trash can with color coded cans (hundreds of new specialty cans).
It is good stewardship… as Christians we are called to be good caretakers of the earth. Camp will be more beautiful because of this effort, and I am glad not to be such a major customer at the land fill.

Tonight’s EP is the Counselor Talent Show… I will not take pictures! It is a celebration of silly skits and counselor personalities. The counselors are very good friends with each other at this point of the summer and when they do a skit the interaction is really good (funny and witty with surprising ease). Last night’s counselor hosts did a series of “raps” to camp themes in between acts and it proved to be one of the highlights of the camp so far! Love these counselors… they are amazing!

Thank you for reading the blog, all is well here. Camp is running smoothly and I see happy faces everywhere I look. The girls LOVE to have their picture taken and crowd around me after EP. We took a ton of pictures at the last two EP’s (trying to get multiple photos of every girl on stage led to about 1,800 photos from me alone last night). For my personal photo file, I will bring it down to a more manageable number of pictures for most other days.

Have a Great Day!

Breakfast: Pancakes and sausage (home made pancakes and locally made sausage with real maple syrup).

Lunch: Hamburgers and French Fries!!!

Dinner: Baked Potatoes and soup (perfect for a rainy evening).