Dropping YaYa off at Music Camp

I spent so many summers attending music camp at the peace gardens.  I worked there for one (terrible summer).  Now YaYa seems to go every summer as well.  This year she worked hard to go for two weeks, and she was beyond excited to get there.  So, it seems, traveling to the peace gardens this time of year has become sort of a pilgrimage for me.  When I get there I remember being there for the first time with my family, just traveling through to Winnipeg as a second grader on family vacation.  The two concrete towers (about to be torn down) had just been built, and the clock tower was new.  I remember being there as a teenager, walking to the formal garden from the music camp with all the other students, and coming again with my mom for a quick visit after the concert at the end of the week.  I remember that long summer I spent living in the peace gardens after my freshman year of college with a lot of loaded, mixed emotions.  Now I get to visit as a mom of a kid going to music camp and rejoice about how excited she is to be there.

While some things have changed in the garden, like the new visitor center, the 9/11 memorial and the plans to remove the concrete towers that are disintegrating, some things are just comfortably the same, like the platform with the flags reaching across the border, the fountains, picnic pavilions and plants planed in symmetry along the length of the garden.  And it’s usually very windy and somewhat drizzly, or possibly there are a few thundershowers looming in the distance.

Even though that summer I lived there I never thought I’d say it, there is something peaceful for me about the peace garden.

Plus, it’s always fun to visit the cacti conservatory.  It wasn’t there when I was younger, but I really do get a charge out of crazy succulents.  

Doesn’t that cactus on the right look like some kind of muppet?  

I’ll get to go back to the garden in a few days when I pick up YaYa and listen to her band concert.  I have no doubt she is having a marvelous time there.