Summer Days and the Blueberry Festival

This summer has flown by, broken down into weeklong chunks depending on where Rosemary is doing summer camp. We started on the first week of July in the Berkshires, where she did a sweet farm camp at the Berkshire Botanical Garden (home to a very friendly goat who does not mind a little extra attention). After recovering from a very first day - torrential rain, flash flood warnings, and more rain - the camp ended up being a big hit. Actually, when we went to pick up Rosemary on the first day, she turned and saw us, and fixed me with a terrific scowl. But at the end of the week, she said, "Mom, remember that look I gave you the first day? I'm sorry about that." That was a first. It was fun watching our city girl strut up to the chicken coop and dig around for an egg (although she could also do that right around here, since there are now chickens living in the Urban Meadow, just adjacent to our favorite playground).

We did a few weeks of camp in Brooklyn and then she returned to the Berkshires for a few weeks with her cousins at another camp up there. This one is a real camp - in there are older kids there for sleepaway camp - but R and her two cousins were there as day campers. The beginning started off with a few jitters -- at the first drop off she announced that it was also known as "Camp Stupendously Bad" (I'm pretty sure she started off calling it Camp Stupid but then self-edited as she went.) She did have a good time, and especially enjoyed the time with just the cousins, Aunt Sam, Grandmama and Baba, when the rest of us returned to the city. This year's phone calls from the Berkshires were highly entertaining, including one where she sang me the events of her day start to finish (especially notable since she is usually very stingy when it comes to giving details of her day). I do wish I'd recorded that. 

         

Jason, the twins, and I were up for a few days. The little girls really, really loved the time with their big cousins.

David came by the first day and captured this Utterly Sylvia expression. (Or maybe Sam got this shot? I lost track.) She is turning out to become quite the mischief maker. More on that in another post. 

The view from the sandbox:

Jump!

We went to the annual Blueberry Festival, a hallowed tradition that begins with the ceremonial eating of a massive blueberry pancake breakfast and the drinking of many small plastic cups of coffee brought around by nice but harried volunteer ladies who are probably not accustomed to being asked to pour other people's coffee. Actually, it begins by being shepherded out the door in the middle of a rain storm to beat the pancake-getting lines, and while this seems overzealous at the outset, those lines do get very long. Austerlitz, New York, is THE place to be on just this one day of the year. Other highlights: all-family basket weaving...  

...and a performance of slightly depressing folk songs played in an upbeat manner (see below). Maggie loved listening to the trio of songs about people getting hung. Sylvia was not too sure.

...and carding wool.

A special bonus: Maggie dances...with pole as partner.