Gardens

My post-Easter break has been taken up with helping Kate get the garden back into some kind of order after the devastatingly cold  winter. The solution: more roses and herbs and fewer tender exotics. At least the olive trees and most of the palms have survived.

Gardens have a deep significance in the history of salvation and in the experience of God's people.

'....Saint John takes up all these experiences and gives a theological interpretation to the place when he says: "across the Kidron valley, where there was a garden" (18.1) This same highly evocative word comes back at the end of the Passion narrative: "In the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid." (19.41) John's use of the word "garden" is an unmistakable reference to the story of Paradise and the Fall. That story, he tells us, is being resumed here. It is in the "garden" that Jesus is betrayed, but the garden is also the place of the Resurrection. It was in the garden that Jesus fully accepted the Father's will, made it his own, and thus changed the course of history.'

Pope Benedict XVI 'Jesus of Nazareth' (Vol 2)