At the peaceful monastery tucked amid research and business parks in Northwest San Antonio, a garden of beans, eggplant, tomatoes and corn is tended daily by religious women who spend their days in quiet prayer amid daily chores.

So among those prayers was an appeal for nourishing rainfall.

Then came a late-night deluge that brought with it three inches of rain and damaging runoff at the Monastery of Discalced Carmelite Nuns on Culebra Road.

A storm on May 26 brought a flow of water that raced down a hillside east of the nuns’ property, flattening a chain-link fence and depositing a layer of silt, rocks, asphalt and other debris spanning several yards.

The mess left behind threatened to block St. Joseph Way, the winding, private drive leading to the monastery.

The nuns discovered it t

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