Songs of Summer Nostalgia

Back in the late 1970s I spent at least a week every summer as a Jr. Counselor at the NH 4-H camps and loved both Spruce Pond Camp and Bear Hill Camp. The summer after I graduated from high school, 1980, I worked the full summer at Spruce Pond Camp as a Sr. Counselor, a paid job, under a UNH-WorkStudy grant.
This was a great experience, my first full summer away from home, learning new things and where I first learned what teaching was all about.  Many of the older Sr. Counselors and Area (ayr) Heads were teachers working the camps as their extra money, summer jobs. The camp director at Spruce Pond that year was big on the Sr. Counselors writing and implementing lesson plans for various day and evening activities. I developed a strong dislike for written lesson plans during this summer, but otherwise had a great time.
After each meal, a section of campers would stay behind in the dining hall and clean up by sweeping and washing the tables. On Friday after lunch, the Jr. and Sr. Counselors had the job of REALLY cleaning the dining hall, moving all of the tables, sweeping and washing the floors. To do this we put on the most recent Neil Young album Live Rust, turn the volume up and sing at the top of our lungs. By the time we got through Sugar Mountain, I Am A Child, Comes A Time, After The Gold Rush and My, My, Hey Hey (Out of The Blue), we were usually finished with clean up and could go to the waterfront for a last minute swim before having to stand on the docks for camper free swim.
Today I was driving home and playing the Neil Young Decade CD full blast (except at stop lights and the gas station) and several of these songs are on that album, since it is almost summer just hearing them took me back 33 years to that summer at Spruce Pond 4-H Camp and I was singing at the top of my lungs again... Luckily no one could hear me this time...

Rain

Finally we are getting some rain today, and yesterday and the day before... before that we had not had any substantial rain in quite a while.  When I turned over the onion bed last weekend, the whole raised bed was totally dry, not the nice moist soil that you would expect to find there in the spring.

This weekend we are expecting several days of rain, I will still be planting some flowers and hopefully get some seeds in the ground to start on their own.  I'm experimenting with starting my own Sweet Anne, but will need to find some good bare spots to get it started in.   I have a good number of flax and climbing black-eyed-Susan seeds to start as well.  I'm a bit late in starting them but they are good for a long time once they get going.

While Mark was recovering from foot surgery our raspberry, blue berry and rose plants came, we put them in with in a few days of arrival.  They came with some cool stuff to mix with water that clings to the roots, it looked like all of the roots little balls of water sacks attached to them.  They all survived planting and are doing quite well regardless of the very dry spring so far.

Currently our wildflower bed is just starting to blossom, some of the white daisies are starting to bloom, they are usually the earliest followed by the Sweet William.  In another garden, the purple lupines are starting to bloom and our three lilac bushes are in full blossom.

Spring in NH and all we need is a bit of rain to keep it going.  No floods please, just enough and then some more sunshine in between.

Big dogs - and perspective

Today I had a chance to sit and talk with my elderly aunt for a while, unfortunately it was at a funeral for her grandson.
But we got to talking about some of the good times we had together and we reminisced about the camp that she and my uncle once owned and how my parents used to bring us to in the summer for family gatherings.  I began thinking about the HUGE dogs that she once had, she told us when we were kids that this breed was a Newfoundland.
What I remember is these two gigantic black dogs that were bigger than any dog I had ever seen and close to being horses.  My aunt had them for many years and when ever we visited I would always ask my dad if she still had the Big Black Dogs.  Both dogs crossed over the rainbow bridge long before I was a teenager and my aunt ended up with two smaller pekingese dogs.
Years later I met someone who had several Newfoundland dogs and remarked "aren't those dogs huge?" and she said yes.  Eventually, I had a chance to visit her house and meet the dogs, and my first thought when I saw them was "are they breeding these dogs smaller now?"
The next time that I visited, my friend's young neice was over and it finally dawned on me that, no, they are not breeding Newfoundlands smaller, I am actually taller and have a different view of this Big Dog.  But still my mind says that these dogs should be almost as big if not bigger than me.
Now that I bring my greyhound into my new school and walk past the kindergarten and first grade rooms to get to the stairs up to the fourth floor, we often meet several of the students as we pass by and their reaction is always "thats a really big dog Mrs Collins"!!  At that point I always look back and remember, yes, when you can look the dog directly in the eye and it is as tall as you are, it is one big dog.
Will these kids go one to think that greyhounds are HUGE dogs forever?  I wonder... it is all in size and perspective.

Spring update

Last weekend we finally got started planting seeds for this year's garden.  I planted statice, black-eyed-susan vines and some heirloom nasturtiums with quite a bit of help from Louie the cat.  I am looking forward to seeing something growing in the garden this year that not only looks good but can be used in arrangements and wreaths.

I have to set something up so that the dogs don't spend all their time ripping things up or taking care of business on the seedlings and flowers.