At the Mission Garden’s 2023 Garlic Festival one group was giving away free garlic soup. I picked up a little cup, took one sip and that ended it for me. I should have looked at the recipe first. I had anticipated that garlic soup would be sorta a garlic-flavored broth soup — like French Onion Soup, which I like. Instead, it was a cream soup, which I don’t particularly like.
So when I got home I checked out Garlic Soup recipes online and, sure enough, every recipe for garlic soup is for a cream soup, not a clear broth-based soup. But that doesn’t change my mind about it.
Barrio Bread — Yes, please
Another Festival highlight was the garlic bread made by the James Beard Award-winning Barrio Breads. They made and sold 500 loaves of bread for the amazingly low price of $1 each. Of course, all were gone before I arrived. I hope that next year they invite more local restaurateurs to participate in the Festival — ones that have garlic items on their menus already. There are more ways to use garlic than soup and bread! And, I’m sure, the French and Italian restaurants around town would be interested and more restaurants would attract more people to the garden.
This year’s Festival was quite different from the last one, starting with the fact that it really was free. The previous times I’ve been to the Garden for events that were advertised as “free”, there were tables set up blocking the way into the garden where I was urged to “donate $5.” Across from the entrance this year there was a raffle table set up where tickets cost $5 but there was no sense of coercion. Just a nice lady in a flowery hat selling raffle tickets.
From soup to soap to baskets of garlic
The powers-that-be at the Mission Garden seem to have begun to realize that they can make money to support the garden by charging vendors to sell their products at the event. At least I hope that was what was happening. There was everything from artisan soap to small trees to books to homemade lime marmalade to handmade baskets overflowing with garlic for planting and others for eating. See more in this slide show. Oh, the adult trike in the third image was ridden by a man who seemed to be tree shopping.
Thousands of years of gardening
Also near the entrance was a table display of the archeology and history of the garden. Originally the site was threaded with large 9 foot deep canals filled with water from the Santa Cruz river. Yes, once upon a time the Santa Cruz river flowed year ’round — not just during monsoon floods. Back then, these were gardens of corn, squash and beans tended by the Hohokam people. The canal and pond in the photo below now echo the ones that were on this site originally.
The garden itself is always interesting, always changing as gardens do. Some of the young fig trees were covered with burlap sunshields. Nearby, the prickly pear fruits were not quite ripe enough to make delicious jam — but soon.
Then, when it becomes too hot to wander through the fig and quince orchard, you can sit quietly in the shade of an old mesquite tree with a carpet of mesquite seeds surrounding you.
The Mission Garden is definitely worth a visit. There is a Bird Walk on August 10th and a Critter Walk (Bats!!) on August 18th
Visit my author’s site to see books I’ve published.
See the Before and After of the Navajo Wash Park tree massacre.
