What a difference a week makes!

I was gone last week… the beach was great by the way… but everyone else was working at camp! Let me give you the lowdown on how much has been done since you left camp.

First… the Dining Hall Porch. We have replaced the decking on the lower part of the dining hall porch. The old decking (only 6 years old by the way) was splintering and did not look good. We had used traditional salt treated lumber for the porch and the sun and rain proved too much for that material (it looked really bad around the edges). We have since discovered the miracle wood Ipe (a very dense wood that we used at the Putt Cove Marina). This wood is amazing, it will last 100 years (just the kind of longevity that Greystone needs) and is perfect on decks. So we tore off the old deck and are putting on the new deck, a process that will be finished this week. The new deck is BEAUTIFUL (a dark mahogany color) and will be a delight to Greystone Girls for generations to come. I am very happy to fix things this well!

Second… the Pavilion Mulch. Many of you campers have had the “sinking feeling” of your foot sinking into the wet mulch outside of the Pavilion. That feeling is now replaced with the amazingly wonderful feel of closely cut luxurious bermuda grass (which now stretches from the putting green to the road). Bermuda grass feels great, likes wet locations, and can handle heavy foot traffic (this is the same grass that we use on the great lawn by the swimming complex). You will LOVE IT. We also have been working on the softball field… fertilizer, seed, and straw now cover the whole area. We put composte on the low areas, softened the hard ground with a big machine, scattered some very nice grass (a custom blend of blue grass, fescue, timothy grass that works well in camp) and covered it all with straw. We are already seeing new shoots of grass, the promise of a lush field next summer. Perfect grass takes a lot of time and effort.

Third… Bungalow 5&6 Mulch. The tentalows and bungalows are not forgotten when we think of wet mulch… many paths need to be improved for rainy summers and we are doing so this winter. Bungalow 5&6 arre the first units to be fixed with the new rock path system. We removed all the mucky mulch and replaced it with lovely small river rock paths (the kind we used at White Hall). A few nice “sitting boulders” define the edge of the road and prevent cars from pulling into the soft ground. It is a huge improvement and we will continue this work all year.

We are always thinking of ways to make camp better. These projects are the “low hanging fruit” of what we learned last summer… camper surveys and our maintenance team make some projects obvious to all. With over 100 buildings, 70 classes, and 1800 campers the number of potential projects is daunting. Our goal is to make camp perfect, with every year we make progress toward that impossible goal!

Thank you for reading. I appreciate the fact that you love what we do at camp (even such details as the kind of grass we use!). YOU are what make camp wonderful and we love you! Keep checking in!!!

Jimboy