Walk, Dumplings, Games

Friday, December 30, 2022

Shields Date Garden

We went to Shields Date Garden on this beautiful day. This spot is one of Indio's highlights. I've been to the shop before and had a date shake, but I've never walked the garden and am really happy to have been able to see it! This was another walk that was more of a slow crawl but that's nothing new. I'm happy to be able to walk outside and breathe fresh air with Auntie Regina, dad, and cousin, Rena.

On our walk we saw a male date tree. Notice the bricks that surround the tree? It's the "male symbol."

Only male date palm trees pollen. They grow pollen "pods" that are similar in appearance to the female but generally about one third to one half taller in height. A typical ratio of male trees to female trees is one male to 48/49 females. Pollination takes place at 95 degrees and fruits need dry, hot temperatures with warm nights. Dates grow large up to 120 feet and can live 100 years.

Isn't that amazing that there's one male tree to 48 female trees? I heard the ratio of men to women in San Francisco was similar about 15 years ago. Well, maybe not that drastic.

The Shields garden had lemon and mandarin trees in addition to the date palm trees. We smelled many of the fruits and they were not fragrant at all. There are 14 Christian/religious stations/stories throughout the garden. Each setting depicted a point in Jesus life: The birth of Jesus, Jesus at the temple, John the Baptist with Jesus and on. I enjoyed seeing this statues.

In 2011, William and Lillian Vanderzalm contacted Shields Date Gardens with a wonderful opportunity. The Vanderzalm’s owned a biblical garden in Vancouver, Canada. They had recently sold the property and were looking to relocate the statues to the Palm Springs area.

In 2013, Shields Garden in Palm Springs opened up the biblical garden that chronologized Christ’s life.

After the gentle walk, the six of us enjoyed two date shakes!

There was plenty to go around and I enjoyed the shake. It's pretty sweet, but dates are sweet.

I hope that there's more natural sugar from the date than added sugar.

Rowena set us up for dinner by bringing five pounds of ground pork, dumpling wraps, ginger, and other ingredients from San Francisco. What a fun, group and cultured activity for our family to do together! We ran out of wraps quick! (Rowena mis-estimated the ratio of wraps to filling). No worries though! Rowena looked up stores that carry dumpling wrap and WOW, there was a Filipino Asian store in Palm Springs. But Indio is 40 minutes from Palm Springs! We didn't want to drive over there for wraps! The good thing was that Nathan was already out there in Palm Springs for an appointment and helped us get four more packs of wraps! Whew!

We had a great time making dumplings. It's a recipe that Rowena got from a high school friend, Marcus. We boiled most of them and had it with soup. There was a request to pan fry some of them, so Nathan did! Look at the beautiful wreath placement of the pan fried ones! It was a delicious meal. If you don't eat pork though, that's a real bummer. Sorry, Rena, you had to have Costco cheese pizza!