Big Excitement at Camp (Not the Good Kind)

I've finally uploaded my vacation pictures.

But that will have to wait, because I have other pictures to share with you.

When I got home from school today, Brian shot out of the house with Quinn on a lead. She told me, in the Quinny Voice, that there was something awesome for me to see. I dropped my stuff and went back out to walk away with Brian & Quinn.

We started walking down towards the town beach, towards the end of the road. About the time we got to the fenced-in entrance to our beach area, Brian said, "Are you ready for something that will bake your noodle?"

And then we came around the corner to where I could see Leap Inn, one of our staff cabins that houses two people.

Well, housed, really.

Here's what happens when you overload an electrical outlet in an ancient building with old wiring:











This is the room where the blaze started. The tan stuff you can see is the remains of the melted mattress. The second picture is a close-up of the mattress.





From the sounds of it, it was a textbook training-style fire. The flames licked up on the (nearly new) metal roof, which kept it mostly contained. The sail shed didn't even get scorched, though it was only a few feet away.



On the other hand, a dying tree near the front of the building is going to have to come down. Here's Brian inspecting the scorch-mark line.




The heat was enough to boil sap out of the boards, even though they're probably 30 or 40 years old by now.



Some of the sail boards leaning against the eaves outside the shack are probably goners, from the tar that was deposited on them.








I just feel so badly for the two guys who were living there. Both of them are working on programming this summer, otherwise they would have been in the cabins, as usual, with campers.

One of them is now one of our leading musicians, and had three guitars in the cabin. One of them wasn't even paid off yet. He salvaged one guitar, but lost his other two, lots of sound equipment, his laptop, his iPod, and all of the clothes he had at camp with him.

The other guy, the one who was living in the room where the blaze started, lost everything. He's had a rough year at school and is looking very ill from his freshman year in college. He had to leave staff training early because of a death in his very immediate family less than three weeks ago. And now this. Poor guy.

This is what really got me, though. We have these songbooks that the camp uses to sing songs out of. Some are old camp favorites from far and wide, while others are songs specific to our camps. They also have a few of the non-sing-along-songs that are used at various times of the day, including the graces we sing before each meal.

Lying just beyond the orange fencing in the sand was this:

Happy July!

Summer camp starts today!! My friend Aaron is the camp director this year. He's very nervous about it 'cause he's got big shoes to fill, but as of last night, he's feeling really ready and excited.

He ran staff training all last week, and it seems like it was very, very successful. He did an auction of camp memorabilia to benefit our scholarship campaign. That jerk brought in $1900!!! We struggle to get that much out of our charity auction in February with our richy-rich benefactors there! I was astonished at what he brought in, and so was he. He'd challenged the staff: raise $1K and he'd shave his beard. Raise $2K and he'd shave his head and beard and stay clean shaven all summer. He's glad to be off the hook for that one, but came over to get a razor blade and some shaving cream last night. This evening he'll be shaving his beard off in front of the entire camp. Hilarious!

Friday night after staff training was over, Brian, Aaron and I ran some of the inevitable "I need this stuff for the start of camp AUGH!" shopping. We had a hilarious time, because Aaron was decompressing big-time and was extremely ADD. We had the cashier in Wal*Mart cracking up by the time we got out of there. Saturday Brian and Aaron went golfing. Today Aaron's gone all day, which gives Brian and I chance to do something that was Brian's brilliant idea and that I'm really excited about:

Guerrilla Gardening!

Aaron has been feeling really bad about how camp looks. For lots of reasons, maintenance hasn't been spending a lot of time in making camp look pretty. I mean, it's supposed to look all rustic around here, but not run down.

Now, at one time, a really avid gardener lived in the house that Aaron lives in now. Between then and now, three separate guys have lived there, which means that where there was once flower bed is now just weedy grass that gets mowed/weed-whacked. Brian's idea is to do some lightning-strike gardening while Aaron is out doing opening-day stuff. He'll come back and we'll have cleaned it out and planted some pretty, low-maintenance stuff that will make Aaron's place look nice, but require nothing from him in terms up upkeep.

So we looked around a little bit yesterday. I talked to Keith, who has some hostas he wants to thin at his apartment house in town. And we left it at that last night.

This morning Keith and I went into his place and dug up all sorts of fun/interesting things from his yard. Then Brian picked me up there and we went to my two favorite local nurseries. We finished up with a stop at Lowe's to get a small Burning Bush for the project, too. We're now just waiting until child-drop-off officially starts to go get started. Pictures to come, of course!

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Muahaha. Muahahahahaha! We have successfully carried out the stealth gardening.

Here's all the goodies in the car: a big bin of hostas, snow-on-the-mountains, violas and a few liriopes for my garden. A bleeding heart bush, a "mocha" coral bells, a burning bush, and some various annuals of different shapes and sizes.





Here's Brian while we were clearing out the weeds and re-finding the bed-edging rocks.





And here's the finished project. We didn't take any "during" photos since we were trying to get it done before we got discovered. We were sure that Aaron would walk up for a quick break to get a soda at any moment, so we were really twitchy! When we'd finished without getting found out, Brian got a little Captain in him. Heh.





Nearest Aaron's front door: burning bush and two colors of hostas, edged with coleus.





Next is the two colors of hostas, mocha coral bells, and another stand of two colors of hostas.





Then some white perennial that I don't know the name of, a stand of two more colors of hostas, some vanilla spoon daisies and lily of the valley.





Then violas, some sort of columbine, the snow-on-the-mountain and some sort of begonia. I forget what those cool spiky yellow annuals are called. But we got some of them, too.





The other end has some sort of purple flowering sweet potato vine billed as an annual, and a white bleeding heart.





It's a very different feeling sort of flower bed. We tried to get things that don't bloom very much for ease of care and also because Aaron is so allergic to bee stings that we were seriously afraid we might kill him. Still, it's already very cool looking and once it fills it, it's going to look even better. It'll be low-maintenance for him, and look great all summer long. Plus next year we can just replant those few annuals for him and voila! Another amazing season.

Now I just want him to come home already and find it, though it's more than likely that it will already be dark before he gets home tonight. Oh well, he'll see it tomorrow morning at reveille.

Ah! I forgot about reveille! DURRRRRRRRR!

Anyways, in my garden this week, a few more things bloomed.

The petunias on my stump are really starting to go crazy. If only the mail-order white ones would keep up with my red ones!





Another clematis bloomed. This one is Dr. Ruppel.





The daisy that the big cheese brought me is also blooming like crazy. I hope that it's a perennial!





And finally, FINALLY! One of my nifty blue mail-order plants is blooming. This is the Stokes Aster: