Category Archives: other gardens

Unusual Monastery Visit

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This time when I drove to the women’s monastery about an hour from here, it was not for a lecture or a service or for contemplative time; it was for a stint of strenuous gardening. The nuns had put out a call for helpers to get the woodsy place under control after the rainy winter and spring have brought out tall weeds of many sorts.

When I came through the open gate I didn’t see anyone around, so I wandered a bit in the direction of some hammering noise. It was Sister Xenia repairing a rabbit hutch. She took me to find Sister Mary, whose day it was for gardening, and she in turn led me to the area I’d be working in.

borage

“We got the weeds whacked down the other day, and now they need to be raked….This plant that is falling across the path needs to be trimmed back….Ivy is growing all over the quince tree and we want to get it out so the tree will have a better chance of bearing more than the three quinces it did last year.”

I put on my gloves, apron, and bandana to keep hair out of my face, and trimmed the blooming borage, leaving some branches so that the sisters could put the flowers in their salads.

Then the raking – whew! A giant eucalyptus tree stands above the monastery grounds and constantly drops pieces of bark, which combined with oak leaves and various other organic material have made a thick and tangled layer of debris that is turning into duff. On top of that were the strewn grassy weeds.

I pulled and yanked with my rake, and piles of scraped-up stuff grew tall in no time. “Someone” with a truck is now looked for both to haul all these piles away, and bring in some topsoil for the vegetable garden. I didn’t see the vegetable garden, but Sister Xenia said she works in it Wednesdays and Thursdays and maybe I would like to join her once a month or something like that? I always do think I can do anything, once a month. Maybe.

The poor quince tree took a long time. I hope he feels better and more fruitful. The sprucing-up was a challenge because on one side of the tree yard waste has been thrown down for many years, as we were led to understand (I had been joined by Tatiana and her son), creating a sort of man-made terrace. The ground level on that side is a several feet higher than on the other side, so that the tree is sort of growing out of a bank.

When I was below, I scrabbled up the “bank” that was mostly eucalyptus rubble, and stretched my tallest to pull as much ivy as I could from the branches. Sometimes three strands of ivy would be twisted round-and-round a thin branch, but at least this kind of ivy was tender and with care could be torn away.

Rescued quince

Then I walked back up the path to the other side and leaned way out, trying not to fall through the mulch, to pull at the ivy from that direction. After the ivy was gone, the many dead limbs were revealed, so I began pruning them out as well as I could with loppers. Several of them are so big they need to be sawed off, but I didn’t try doing it by myself in a precarious spot like that.

Galium aparine

Sticky weed is one plant that I went to war with at the monastery. Sister Mary called it that; I had never heard a name for it before, maybe because I never even saw it before a couple of years ago. Its usual common name is bedstraw or catchweed; it is Galium aparine. I pulled lots of this icky-sticky vine out of shrubs and flowers and everywhere, and it fought for its survival by depositing sticky little seeds all over my hair, gloves, socks….trying to come home and thrive here, no doubt.

Gardening is always a workout for me these days, given my age and the way the work always seems to have multiplied by the time I get there. A weed is easier to pull when it is small, to give a small example of what I’m talking about. Today was no different in that way, but the tasks I did made me use some different muscles, so I feel well exercised, shall we say.

It was lovely being at the monastery, and I’m glad I could be of use. I might have had some contemplative time while gardening if my mind hadn’t been so engrossed in solving garden problems and keeping my two feet under me. So if I go again, I’ll plan to spend the day and take breaks with the sisters in the church.

Cold Snap Gardening

other gardens,


As I was about to stick a gazania into its hole next to the church parking lot, I got a call on my cell from my husband, telling me the weather forecast: it’s supposed to snow down to 3500′ tonight. I immediately thought of Pippin, who is weary of the cold, and wondered if she is getting snow tonight.


I was a bit chilly myself, but at least I had gone back in the house to put on more layers before driving off with my garden tool kit, because there was no sunshine or warmth. And it didn’t ever get up to 60° today.

The north wind was blowing, but the filtered light was perfect for taking pictures of all the flowers there at church — if my shutter could keep up with the fluttering of blossoms.

Look! A hose is lying around even at church; someone was washing her car nearby.

There are several people who do yard work on the property, but I pretty much take care of the containers. Several times a year everything I’ve planted seems to look good together, but often things are a bit ragged or odd.

Today I added some snapdragons so that when the poppies and pansies expire from heat, perhaps the snaps will be making a show. I planted a lovely pink geranium in an empty clay pot.

I haven’t had much to do with this rose display lately, but we all are currently raving over the giant apricot irises.

My favorite cistus

At least the cool weather makes the Iceland poppies happy. I found out that the small orange-flowered perennial on the right is helianthemum, and from searching around on the Net I think this one is called Chocolate Blotch.

I know there was noise of traffic on the street, but it was a long time before that entered my consciousness. I heard mourning doves as I was wiggling clover roots out from the bed of ajuga. The neighbors seem to have a new bird, which I couldn’t see, but it cried like an angry peacock. Bird calls impress on my brain more easily on cloudy days.

Three hours is about my limit for at stint at church, weeding, planting, trimming, feeding, and carrying buckets of garden waste to the compost heap. All the bending and stooping must be worth a few pilates sessions; I recover by walking across the property to the next half barrel or perennial bed.

But this afternoon when I pulled into my own driveway and saw all the weeds in the cracks, I couldn’t bear to go into the house until I had hacked away at them for a while. Now I’m hoping to rest up and stretch out enough to have stamina for Vigil this evening.
I checked the weather, and it looks like Pippin will likely be having “snow showers.” That girl needs a greenhouse. But here, of course, we are not that high, or cold. So I can say, bring on the thunderstorms!

A gift becomes a bisque

food and cooking, other gardens,

Two weeks ago I was given a hunk of very orange volunteer squash by the nuns at the monastery. After I baked it in the oven I wanted to eat it all just plain, because it tasted that good, and as sweet as candy.

But I had in mind to make soup using the same recipe that Kate (new nickname for my youngest) had found at Epicurious and cooked for us when she was home for Christmas. We collaborated on the soup, actually, and I’ll post here how we made it, not quite as the recipe instructed.

For example, the recipe told us to take two 2# butternut squashes, bake them, measure out the flesh and use three cups of it, then “reserve any remaining squash for another use.” If I did that sort of thing the remaining squash would get moldy in the fridge or sit in the freezer for a year or two and dry out. So we used all our squash (when Kate made it we used the true Butternuts from my garden, and they don’t come in even pound weights, by the way) and increased some other ingredients proportionally.

Curried Orange Squash Bisque

3-4# orange winter squash
olive oil
2-4 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 peeled apple, chopped
2-3 teaspoons Thai red curry paste (ours was Thai Kitchen)
about a quart chicken broth
2 bay leaves (optional)
1/4 to 1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon honey (or more if your squash isn’t sweet)
1/2 cup or more sour cream, stirred smooth
chopped fresh cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

Brush or spray the cut side of the squash with olive oil and place cut side down on a baking sheet. Bake at 375° for about an hour or until tender. Scoop out the squash and measure it if you care to know how much you ended up with.

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, carrots and apple. Sauté 5 minutes. Add curry paste; stir 2 minutes. Add broth, bay leaves and squash. I used the bay leaves but Kate didn’t, and I liked her soup better, though I don’t know if it had anything to do with the bay. Maybe it was the variety of apple, or some other slight difference in our preparation.

You have to accept this degree of inconsistency when you cook — well, I do.  If it’s not the amounts of ingredients that affects the finished product, it’s the differences between one squash and another, or the change from 1/4 to 1/3 teaspoon of pepper that wasn’t measured. We are aiming for a hearty pot of soup, and not to become epicureans, even if we do like to search that website.

Bring the soup to a boil; reduce heat to medium and simmer uncovered 1 hour. Now, we couldn’t figure out any reason to cook it for an hour unless it was to get the flavor of bay into it, and when Kate made it we didn’t have time for that. You really only need to cook it until the vegetables are tender.

Discard the bay leaves, and purée the soup in batches in the blender or food processor. Return to the pot, stir in cream and honey and sour cream. Season with salt and pepper. Rewarm over medium-high heat. Divide among bowls and sprinkle with cilantro.

I forgot to take a picture with the cilantro on top….

I just now noticed that the sour cream was for drizzling over the top of the soup after it is already in the bowls. That would be pretty! But we mixed ours into the soup, and it was very tasty. The sour cream and curry gave the bisque just the right amount of zip, though I suspect that some brands of the curry would add more heat than Thai Kitchen did. If you want something spicy you’ll need to add more curry paste.

Even my husband, who despises squash, liked this soup!

Wandering into Urban Homesteads

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God willing, today was the last day I will have to live out of my car. The floors took two weeks instead of one. In the meantime I have forgotten how to keep house–having a thick layer of fine wood dust on everything each night has beaten me down–and haven’t learned how to be a gypsy. I’ve been leaving the house at 9:00 and wandering around the county doing little errands or some shopping. I can take all the time I want to try on clothes or look for that special title at the library’s used book store…

But today, Memorial Day, the library was closed, and there was no place to be. My bed, my computer, and some vegetables were what I longed for. I have lost all my sociability and courage and just want to be a housewife hermit for a few months.

But before today’s last straw, some outings I enjoyed were gardening at church, and having a long-overdue chat with my priest; sitting in Starbucks on a day of pouring rain and drinking the largest Café Mocha I’ve ever indulged in; and visits with crafty gardening friends.

K. and S. got more chickens, and a hive of bees! They are growing everything from parsley and onions to raspberries and blueberries. K. has been knitting sweaters and socks. It was lovely to catch up on their homesteading developments.

One night we visited with our longtime friends who I will call Art and Di. Di is one my best-ever book friends; we never have enough time to sit by a fire in winter, or on the patio in summer, to talk about our reading and how it is all connected. She and my husband never tire of sharing music from their old and new favorite musicians.

Art creates beauty, whether it’s in his sketchbook or the garden. Among the santolina, lavender, germander and California poppies he had this yellow-flowered giant I wasn’t familiar with. He said it was sage, and wanting to know just what sort, I went home and researched it online.It didn’t seem to be in the salvia group, so I set several of my botanical sleuths on the chase and found out that it is Jerusalem Sage, not a salvia but Phlomis fruticosa. I also learned that Salvia and Phlomis are both members of the Lamiacea family, also known as the mint family.

In addition to propagating unthirsty plants such as the ones that populate the textured garden in their front yard, he has created a clever drip/wicking irrigation system that gets the needed amount of water right to the roots of his back yard vegetables. In the photos here, if you look closely you can see that the wick goes into a piece of hose carrying the moisture deep to the root zone. The paper bag that normally hides the water pot from the sun has been lifted briefly for me to see it.


Writing about these inspiring gardens and people I love is helping bring my most stressful day and fortnight to a better close than I thought possible when I sat down here an hour ago. Just remembering gardens and books and good friends is soothing and healing.