For the last several weeks, Minotaur Books has been emailing a special series of thoughts on the gardens of Three Pines. Today is the last one, The Village Green, and I thought I’d share it with you as part of this week’s Penny Prompts.
I have also just discovered that Louise Penny’s newest Armand Gamache book, Miss Wolcott’s Ghost comes out next Tuesday, October 20th! I thought it wouldn’t be out until a week later, so I am very excited, and will now spend the rest of this week finishing the books I’m currently in the middle of!
Prompt: Write about your garden or any of the gardens in Three Pines or around your neighborhood. Include your sketchbook to doodle the flowers you see and like.
Despite the book coming out a week earlier than I anticipated, I will continue with Penny Prompts through the rest of this month.
One of my rituals when I’m on writing retreat is to take a photo of the first breakfast oatmeal of the retreat. I don’t always publish it, but it’s nearly always there in my phone’s memory. In addition to the taste and variety of the food, there is the wonderful blessing of not having to plan it or cook it or clean it up. It takes some of the stress out of the weekend.
Last weekend’s writing retreat, or was it two weekends ago, left me with inspiration as well as the dread of reevaluating my checklists and my outlines and my path forward. However, the food can still inspire even when the planned inspiration hangs like dew over the morning grass.
Added to my hot, comfortable oatmeal is butter, brown sugar, and dried cranberries. A very simple combination that always says retreat to me, and gets me in the right mindset for a writing weekend.
My tea this weekend was PG Tips. It is a good writing tea.
The flowers were not for eating, but we enjoyed them with our meals nonetheless.
The St. Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine & Historic Site is located on State Rt. 5 in Fonda, New York, deep in the heart of the Mohawk Valley. This is the home of St. Kateri Tekakwitha who lived here from 1666-1676 before moving north to New France, now known as Quebec, Canada. The Mohawk village of Caughnawaga (“on the rapids”) brought its name with them when they moved north in earlier years. While the meaning is the same, it is spelled differently, taking on the Mohawk language’s characteristics rather than the English or French: Kahnawake.
Here, the shrine in Fonda was established in 1938 as the Fonda Memorial of Catherine Tekakwitha and operates under the Order of Franciscan Friars Minor Conventual. It has long been a place of pilgrimage. Fr. Thomas Grassman, OFM was integral in developing the shrine land and excavating the village of Caughnawaga, which remains the only fully excavated Iroquois village in the world.
The shrine grounds are open year round from dawn to dusk, and the trails have a difficulty range for all ages. The Candle Chapel is also open year round for prayer and meditation. The other buildings are open in the spring, and will be available through their last mass in late October or the first weekend in November.
On the grounds you will find the Native American museum and St. Peter’s Chapel housed in what was once the Veeder Family Barn, the Maximilian Kolbe Pavilion where most of their masses take place on Saturday at 4:30pm and Sunday at 10:30am in the warmer seasons. There is a peace grove, Grassman Hall (only opened for specific events), the candle chapel, the Caughnawaga Village Site, and Kateri Spring in addition to hiking trails. Public bathrooms are closed in the winter and the gift shop is by appointment only.
This weekend, however, everything is open and available in celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Weekend. The Mohawk Choir from Akwesasne will be in attendance for both masses, and Albany Diocese Bishop Mark O’Connell will be presiding at the Sunday mass.
Saturday welcomes Jon Sweeney at 2pm for a lecture and book signing for his book, Nicholas Black Elk and Francis of Assisi and on Sunday at 1pm, archives assistant Nathan Turkowsky lectures on “The Waters of Creation: Baptism and Haudenosaunee Cosmology.” This is a perfect way to commemorate St. Kateri’s 350th anniversary of her baptism on these very grounds!
In celebration of the upcoming release, at the end of this month, of Louise Penny’s newest Armand Gamache mystery book, Mrs. Wolcott’s Ghost, I invite you to join me each Wednesday from now until October 27th for special writing prompts I’ve devised using excerpts from her books.
While on our summer holiday, we stopped for tea at the Three Pines Cafe, which may have been the impetus for doing this series now.
(c)2026
“…wiped the condensation off the bathroom mirror and a man in his late fifties appeared…”
“Though it happened each and every morning, the face that looked back could still surprise him. Away from any reflection, he was in his early forties. But each morning he was reminded that was not actually true.”
Armand Gamache, The Black Wolf by Louise Penny
I think many of us have had this same moment that Armand is feeling when something comes up that we are no longer able to do or look into the mirror accidentally and wonder who that is looking back at us.
At a conference, and I may have written about this before, I was asked my age, and I replied, “38.” Friends, I was 48, and it took me a full ten minutes or more to realize that. Even now, more than a decade later, I still think I’m 38 give or take a few years.
Today’s prompt is:
How old do you feel? If you could go back to any age in your past (or perhaps a future age), what is it about that age that makes it a happy time for you? What are things you did then that you don’t do now (for whatever reason) that you would like to do again? What about things you did that you don’t necessarily regret, but what would you have thought twice about or not done with the wisdom you now have?
