Several months ago, we posted an article from the Rosary Pilgrim describing a walk through the monastery grounds as they were in 1922. Join us for a walk through our grounds as they are today!

While there is a certain myth that cloistered nuns don’t go outside, we can assure you that that is definitely not true! If the day is nice, (or even if it isn’t!) you will find sisters walking the paths during meditation, playing an intense game of monastery kickball at recreation, or out working in the vegetable garden.

As you first walk out the door, to your left you can see the Sacred Heart statue and behind it, the new wing. This statue has had quite the variety of landscaping around it over the years, as you can see from the pictures. It is currently surrounded by azalea bushes and daffodils which are beautiful in the spring.

Chasing cows out of the garden!

Along the side of the enclosure wall we have crosses, marking the Stations of the Cross. Sisters can often be seen outside walking along this section of the wall during the Fridays of Lent, and the elderly sisters who can’t quite make it all the way outside can even make their Stations from the cloister, which has a view of the crosses. The stations had previously stretched along a portion of the wall which was removed to make room for the new wing, but we were able to slide the crosses down the remaining part of the wall to make room for the displaced crosses.

The crosses begin at a stone patio which has a statue of Our Lady overlooking it. A generous friend of the monastery donated some comfortable patio furniture, which combined with some benches and a swing make it a popular spot when the weather is nice. One of its great advantages - it is in the shade during noon recreation!

Turning with your back to the new wing and Sacred Heart, you look out on the rest of the grounds. We have a paved drive which splits here in multiple directions – to the left and straight ahead, the path loops around the property. To the right, it leads to the enclosure gate and out to the driveway and parking lot outside.

Following the path to the right, we come to the enclosure gate. All the construction equipment for the new wing had to come through this gate, and a couple of times, the truck didn’t quite make it, leaving the gate a bit worse for the wear! Just to the side is a patio with a large statue of St. Dominic which was sculpted by our late Sr Mary Peter’s great nephew. A bench in a shady spot makes this a nice place for meditation.

Sr. Mary Peter with St. Dominic

The yard slopes down from the monastery and gate, which makes the hill off the driveway just inside the gate ideal for sledding in the winter. The plows usually dump their snow at the head of the hill, making a great ramp for a bit of extra speed!

Heading back down the driveway from the gate, we come to the cemetery, watched over by St Michael dramatically spearing the devil through the throat. This is one of the few statues you will see in the older pictures which we still have today – it has survived the weathering effects of the years better than many of the others.

Flowers have replaced the hedges which surrounded the cemetery originally. Along the driveway are rosebushes, from which the Blessed Roses are collected and pressed. Along the top and opposite side is the Resurrection Garden, with a variety of flowers including many Easter lilies, hyacinths, and tulips – planted from the flowers given to us at Easter each year. In the middle of the cemetery is a large cross, and at the bottom, a statue of St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death. As you can see from the pictures, the cross has sunk into the ground by several feet over the years!

To the right of the cemetery is the yard which slopes down from the monastery and gate. Aside from a pleasant path for a walk, this also serves as the monastery baseball/kickball field.

Following the drive down past the end of the cemetery and around the statue of St. Joseph, we are now in the lower part of the grounds, and the wall along the bottom of the yard borders the train tracks which run along our property. We can often hear the trains go by, but after a short time in the monastery you stop noticing it.

To the left are the old greenhouse and carriage house, which were original to the property when the nuns came in 1919. The carriage house was first put to use as a small shrine, then by the 1940’s was being used as a garage. That stuck, and is still what we use it for today. The building is beautiful, with stucco walls and wood ceiling, and many windows to let in the light. At one point the community considered turning it into a hermitage, but the cost to renovate it would have unfortunately been prohibitive.

The old greenhouse didn’t survive its original use for very long. Today, Sr Mary Magdalene is working on transforming it into a woodshop. She currently has all of her tools crammed into a small room in the basement, with no ventilation for all of the sawdust and no windows with natural light, so this will be a much more pleasant place to work.

Next to the old carriage house and what will soon be a woodshop is the orchard. Unfortunately, disease and age along with critters and pests mean that we no longer get quite the bumper crop of apples, peaches, pears, and other fruit that we used to. We have lost several peach trees over the past couple winters, but we still have one tree left! We also have several cherry trees as well as some chestnuts and a pawpaw tree, which has fruit similar to mango and is native to New Jersey.

A pawpaw

Chestnut

Past the orchard is the summer house and berry patch. The berry patch has slowly expanded over the years, and now has blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and kiwi berries. The raspberries are the most prolific crop, as apparently raspberries are somewhat of a weed and can take over if you let them! We eat them fresh over the summer and freeze what we can’t eat for future appearances in jam, desserts, and even raspberry ice cream.

The path leads up past the berry patch along the enclosure wall under giant, towering pine trees. It is amazing to look at old pictures and see those same trees, some just barely taller than the wall, others not even close to clearing it.

Under the pines, we have a small rock grotto and statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. The path to the grotto leads past the pond, in which a number of different colored goldfish swim around. (Did you know – not all goldfish are gold!) The pond has a small waterfall which aerates the water and keeps it moving, which combined with the pretty flowers, makes the benches here a popular spot!

The path has been climbing uphill from the berries past the pines, and comes out to a flat place. This is where the original house stood which was the first monastery. A garage now occupies the place where the house once stood, and along the side of the garage, we have our vegetable gardens. We grow a number of vegetables - the ordinary ones like tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, cucumbers, squash, as well as more unusual ones like okra!

Continuing around the garage, we come to a large rose garden surrounding a statue of Our Lady. This statue came to us when the monastery in Camden closed, and a rose garden sprang up around it when we needed to move the rose bushes which were planted in the excavation zone for the new wing. An eagle scout candidate then helped make the rose garden what it is now, adding paths, planting new rose bushes and trellises, and providing benches. The paths also lead to the little hermitage which is between the rose garden and our vegetable gardens.

Just around the corner, we find the old shrine which so many pilgrims traveled to in the early days of the monastery. In the 1990’s, a pine tree struck by lightning fell and damaged the wall near the grotto. Since the wall needed significant repairs anyway, this seemed a good opportunity to bring the grotto within the enclosure. The wall was moved out and now surrounds the grotto, allowing the sisters to see and pray in the shrine that is such a significant part of the history of our monastery.