Spring is arriving... even if it is in spurts and fits. Overall, after a very cold Spring, we are finally starting to warm up.  And then, just as you think things are warming up, you get mid-20s for the overnight in the forecast so the water line to the Vegetable garden has to get drained like it did Friday night. Surprisingly, I saw little evidence of frost after that one. It's like that with Spring in the Midwest, though. You think it's finally here and then you're blindsided by a cold spell. Luckily, as we approach our average last frost date, those cold spells are just the dying thro ..read more

Where I come from, once Spring arrives, it is there to stay. Having spent nearly 12 years out here in the Midwest now, I know that is a very unrealistic expectation. Spring in the Midwest is very bipolar. As it was this past week, it can be in the 70s one day and then in the 20s the next (as a side note, when I taught in Wichita for two years before I joined the monastery, the school's A/C and heat was set by the previous day's weather. This is a terrible plan. Many classes were held outside because the heat was going full blast and it was 80 degrees outside...). While nice on the warm days ..read more

  The North Courtyard at its peak. This is literally the fifth attempt at a blog post this year. It's not that I haven't been gardening... it's more that I've been so busy that recording it has been at the bottom of the priority list. Then the heat really came on... and my motivation really tanked. Now I'm a week out from teacher meetings starting up, so I'm cramming in some work outside while the weather is just plain lovely. Most of this post will be about the Veg Garden, since, other than mowing and picking flowers for the flower business, I've not really done much in the cou ..read more

The Crucifix in the center of our cemetery looking nice against the snowy trees. School starts back up tomorrow at the high school and I'll be busy again, so I took the chance this afternoon to break in a new pair of hiking books and take some pictures of our somewhat snowy locale right now. Wednesday brought us a lot of ice rather than snow, which caused a late-night power-outage. The trees all around town looked like glass the next day. Friday brought a few inches of snow, but I hadn't been out and about in it until today when I went out to get the snow off the car I use so I don't ..read more

The vegetable harvest for this week. Whew, life has been busy lately! With the start of school, any free time has mostly fallen to the wayside, so the gardens have suffered some for this. I didn't even have the time (more likely, the energy) last weekend to go up and pick any vegetables. Right now it's mostly just me running the show, so things are only getting picked once a week. While not a problem for some things, it gives the chance for the hornworms to do their damage on tomatoes before I can get to them and whatever is eating our melons before I can pick them (my guess is a grou ..read more

The damage done. Long time, no post, as always when it comes to July and early August. August? It's already mid-August? Time was going very slow during lockdown, but ever since we opened up again it seems that time is just flying by. Well, let's get into it. This whole post is about the Vegetable Garden, mostly because I spent most of the afternoon up there. It's also probably going to be a long one! There's something eating our tomatoes just as they are ripening, just before I get around to picking them. The electric fence is working well, so it's not deer. There's no other damage o ..read more

Pambo in his adorableness. Meet Pambo! Pambo is our new puppy here at the Abbey. Our Br. Leven had decided to get a puppy this next fiscal year, but the Abbot decided that it was worth getting him earlier as a good distraction for the community during the lockdown. He's an Australian shepherd and somewhere around 11 or 12 weeks old now, I think. He's a rambunctious pup, as they often are. Luckily he's got lots of monks around to keep him occupied. He sleeps in the Boiler Room and spends his days in a pen we built off the north side of the monastery, across the parking lot from the Stu ..read more

Abbot James, head of our monastery, blessing some of our seedlings. Quite the busy couple of weeks we've had! School finished for me last week and grades are all in, so I've had more time to devote my other assignments of Abbey Archivist and the Courtyards/Gardens. While not all the productivity is something that will show up on camera well, so some of this I'll just be reporting. Most importantly, I asked Abbot James to come out and bless the seedlings for the Veg and Cut Flower garden for a good harvest this year. He came out and did it on May 16, which was the feast of St. Isidore ..read more

Setting up the bean trellis. I didn't intend for a whole month to go by and not post anything, but alas, with school still going for another week, it is what it is. Lots of work has been done over the last few weeks in the gardens, so lots to report on! It has been concentrated in two areas, the Vegetable Garden and the North Courtyard. Yesterday I spent the afternoon putting up a row of pole bean trellis. It's early yet and far too cold with the current cold front coming through, but as Monty Don put it last year on Gardeners' World, they stand as the promise of Summer to come. It to ..read more

Straw mulch out in the Veg garden. You can see the old coal stack of the monastery and the Abbey Church tower in the background. The massive shut down of a normal way of life that we are all experiencing has affected us in different ways. For me, it means that my main out-of-house assignment, teaching at our high school, has all gone digital. I have less to manage than most of the other teachers because I was just teaching four classes of just one subject, so only one prep, but presenting it four times. Now that it's gone digital, I post my stuff at the beginning of the week and then ..read more