Today some of us visited an organic garden not far away, with many weird and wonderful things in it. There were many different gardens which were themed differently, there was a wild garden, a herb garden, a knot maze, a gravel shell garden and even a compost section. There was a cottage garden based on some fellow called Cobett, who wrote a book back in the olden days advising the peasant type people how best to use their gardens to provide for their families. There were handy little quotes from his book dotted around to explain the presence of the various plants. It seems he wasn’t keen on potatoes or tea, but very fond of beer and bread. I took a photo of my favourite quotation but it was too small to put here without an enlarge function on my PDA, so I’ll transcribe it;
“Every woman, high or low, ought to know how to make bread. If she do not then she is unworthy of trust or confidence and indeed a mere burden on her community.”
This was pointed out to me by one of the members here (a member being someone who has made a commitment to the community for a certain amount of time, as opposed to a guest), a member who makes the most marvellous bread rolls I have ever tasted, which makes it even more appropriate (I’ll let you assume her gender) – I have the recipe and look forward to lifting my community’s burden by never buying bread again! It’s surprisingly easy and only 20 minutes in the oven! What are all my classy friends doing with these bread makers?
I had some good chats with some of the guests, and I mentioned to one chap that I had noticed that no one in Pilsdon seemed to have any “best friends”; no two people were obviously particularly close, but rather everyone seemed friends with everyone else (although I’m sure there are some exceptions!). I know from reading Susan Howach (!) that Benedictine monks and nuns are generally encouraged not to develop ’special relationships’ but I suppose I didn’t expect it to happen naturally – the guest I was talking to simply said that it was the mark of a good community, and I guess I hadn’t seen it that way before. Makes a lot of sense.
Apart from this fun escapade not much as happened today, although we have a bunch of pilgrims with us at present. Apparently the student contingent of the group all decided to skip the actual pilgrimage part and are all training down to Canterbury tomorrow, but the faithful grown ups have joined us for the evening – suddenly I am playing the host (i.e. making a bed or two and washing up my dirty mugs) in my cosy two bedroom sofabed-in-the-living-room cottage, which is lovely. Two impressive beards, one on a Sikh fellow and one on a Christian fellow (I am assuming they are both chaplains) and a lady who used to stay with the monks on the same site a few years back.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you for all the kind comments – in a funny way I am glad my egologues are being read in real time so to speak; even in quite an open community it is still helpful to connect with the outside world, I’m sure it is the same with anyone in a slightly foreign context. And it saves Amy the bother of hearing me drone on about my day on the phone every night!
Joe Turner has left a helpful question on my facebook feed (google to the rescue) which I have attempted to answer, which might be appearing in fuller form in a day or so. Goodnight for now.
Image is broken again.
"I’ll let you assume *her* gender"
Hmm…