Gardening

My mother loves to garden… she has an amazing house surrounded by amazing plants of all types. She cares for those plants with great care and many hours of work every week and the results are stunning. The eye scans every detail and soaks in the beauty in stages, every day unfolds another detail as the plants grow, flower, and change color. Camp is like gardening; let me explain.

It is beautiful, but unfolds in stages. We start with seeds on the opening day (the community is not yet comfortable with eachother, lots of quiet and tenative campers who are not yet sure they want to be noticed). With each passing day the campers assume more personality, boldly showing off their personalities with the confidence that they will be encouraged and celebrated with each tenative effort. By the end of the session, it is really beautiful to see these hundreds of girls being themselves with eachother.

It is hard. Growth is not without work… we have to go outside our “comfort zone”. Sometimes (in fact a lot of the time) it involves being sad. Homesickness is a small but important component of the camp experience: it was for me and it has been for my children as well. Healthy homesickness involves being sad at times during those first days of camp (usually during quiet times like Rest Hour or before bedtime). You might well get a letter that reflects this emotion… treasure it! Such are the jewels of camp… most are not in a form that you can treasure forever! If a girl is not adjusting to camp in a healthy way (there are occasional cases of REAL homesickness, unhealthy homesickness), we call you and get you involved. We also call to let you know if your daughter is having a hard time throughout the day, but is coping well (just to let you know). We don’t call if your daughter is just sad before bedtime or during rest hour in these first days of camp… because we don’t see that as anything other than normal adjustment to being away from you. If you are concerned, just give us a call and we will check it out. Just because it is hard, it doesn’t mean it isn’t good! Hard often leads to good… you just have to make sure that you are on the right path! This is what we do, and we are good at it.

Lessons of camp; aah.

Breakfast today was an example of quick foot work. We messed up the pancake batter and had to adjust on the fly… making Fritatas! Most of the girls had never tried this wonderful egg dish, the opinion was one of amazement. Good food is sometimes hard to spell!

Lunch is going to be GREAT: BLT’s (thick cut bacon, fresh tomatoes grown just 10 minutes from camp, crisp lettuce)!!! I love BLT’s, having them on home made bread is sublime… None of us eat this well at home.

Dinner is excellent as well: Fried Chicken, but the breading is crushed up Cheese Its. This is excellent, and the first time we have made it this summer (saving some special recipes for August Camp is a tradition that the staff loves).

Weather is hot and sunny. I will get some good photos today, meetings kept me in the office yesterday but I should be able to check out the program this morning. Stay tuned… will update my slideshow photos as the day goes on. The first pictures are from my office window, how is that for a view!

Enjoy your day, thank you for your support.