Chat & Photos
Children's Mary Garden
Feb 14 2002, Vicki
Spring is in the air!
Thank you very much for your wonderful information!!! I will be
starting plants from seed with my children so we can convert the
side of our small back yard to a Mary garden.
I think our Lady will be happy to have seedlings started by
little children to honour Her. We are very impatiently waiting
for it to be time! We will be planting "Fruitful Virgin"
strawberries from seed for some hanging baskets.
Do blue poppies have any significance? We are trying our hand at
them too, in any event the blue remind us of the colors of the
Inmaculate!
How much love and hope can be found in such a humble occupation!
It is good to savour these things in our hearts.
Thank you and God bless you for the wondeful job you have done.
Feb 15 2002, John Stokes
Thank you for your valued message
For your children's Mary Garden, I assume you have read my website
article, "In Mary's Garden". I attach another photo taken
at the time (1953) of my daughter, with a flat of seeds she
started. I remember starting some seeds, myself, with my own
kindergarten class in a sunny south-facing location on the school
grounds - one of the few things I remember about kindergarten.
We do not know of any specific symbolism for blue poppies, but as
you point out they have the general blue color symbolism - of Our
Lady's fullness of grace. Color symbolism reminds us of Our Lady
as we approach the Mary Garden, before we can make out the form
symbolism of the individual flowers: white for her immaculate
purity; blue for her fullness of grace; red for her sorrows; and
yellow/gold for her heavenly glories.
"Look on the flower, think of Mary."
Feb 15 2002, Vicki
I have another question, does Mirabilis Jalapa have any
significance? I am native of Peru, and perhaps my imagination
betrays me: my grandmother used to muse on the fact that the
blooms opened at about 6pm (dusk in most of Peru/half an hour
variation winter to summer). Back to the point, her musing was
about the blooms opening at the Angelus time. Now to where my
imagination may betray my memory: is it known as well as the
Angelus Flower?
Do Roman Chamomile and Winter Savory acquire the same
interpretation/name as German Chamomile and Summer Savory?
Thanks a million!
Feb 18 2002, John
I made a quick computer search of the thousand listings in our
various research documents but found no "Angelus Flower". I had a
vague recollection of an "Our Lady's 6 o'clock", but it turned out
to be "eleven o'clock" - from the research Winifred Jelliffe
Emerson did in the 1930's for Frances Crane Lillie and her Woods
Hole Garden of Our Lady - which we have in our archives. "Angelus
Flower" would be valued for this garden, planted as adjunct to the
Angelus Tower Mrs. Lillie had given to the church.
I'm sure there are many flowers, especially in Latin America, with
religious names not found in the written documentation. We have
requested reports of such flowers in "You Can Help" on our website
Home Page, but have received few replies. Thus, your message is
much appreciated.
Recently, we learned through our senior Associate, Fr. Tom
Stanley, that in Puerta Rico, Bougainvillea is currently known as
"Trinitaria" - which symbolism we could see on inspection is from
the groups of three small white flowers in each of the red leaf
clusters. This shrub widely culivated in warm tropical areas such
as southern Florida serves as an outstanding plant for Mary Garden
backgrounds and enclosures.
Year before last one of my granddaughters spent a summer in Equador
and saw red flowers called "Our Lady's Lips" and "Our Lady's
Smile", but did not obtain other common names or the botanical
name. (in our research for Spain there is Fagonia cretica - Risa
de la Virgen (The Virgin's Smile).
Just the other day I learned that a favorite cut flower, "Peruvian
Lily", regularly obtained from a neighborhood corner florist - in
shades of white, pink, red and yellow, and lasting for 2 weeks -
is also known as "Astromaria" (botanical name?). "Mary's Star"?
Do you know of this from your Peruvian background?
As for Roman Chamomile and Winter Savory, about which you ask, the
medieval faithful who gave the religious names to plants from
their perceived symbolism were not botanists, but on hearing from
itinerate preachers or wandering minstrels, etc. of legends rooted
in plant symbolism, apparently searched their own roadsides and
countrysides for such plants symbols. Thus, as pointed out and
illustrated for "Mary's Tears" and "Mary's (torn) Tresses" in the
Chat thread on "Plant Symbols of Mary's Sorrows", many different
flowers have been documented with the same symbolism and names.
We judge that we should stick basically to the documented or
current flowers of a given symbolism, but may also privately
discern a given generic symbolism in a horticulturally appropriate
alternate as with precedence in popular tradition. However, in
speaking to others we should be careful to distinguish these from
documented flower symbols - to preserve the authenticity of
historic tradition, and the spiritual unction of symbols which have
been time-steeped through the centuries.
I, for example, sought an alternate
flower with the generic spathe and
spadix. Madonna and Child, abstract
symbolism of the hard to obtain,
short-blooming, English wildflower,
"Lady-Lords" (Arum maculatum),
and was delighted to find it in the
Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum wallisii
and hybrids) blooming all year
round in our store windows and
shopping malls.
Feb 22 2002, Vicki
We may be able to start a "Mary" garden with the children in the
school that my son attends.
This would probably not have been possibly without your years of
hard, selfless devotion and work for Our Lady. Serve Mary, and
you shall not perish. What a fortunate, blessed soul you are to
be thus called!
We will have you and your family in our prayers, always!
Feb 28 2002, John
I am pleased that our presentations of the Flowers of Our Lady may
serve to move the starting of a Mary Garden in the school that
your son attends.
We of Mary's Gardens consider our work with Our Lady's flowers to
be of great potential for the deepening of faith and action so
needed in our times in Sacred History, and it is encouraging to
find those such as yourself who share this vision.
Your kind words about our work for Our Lady are much appreciated,
and I thank you for your prayers. I hasten to point out, however,
that while I personally have been blessed in being able to
maintain the continuity of the project for 52 years, there has
been major input from my founding partner and mentor, Ed McTague,
who conceptualized and initiated the project, and with whom I
worked until his death 1973, R.I.P.; Bonnie Roberson who took on
the primary responsibility from Idaho from 1968 until her death in
1983, R.I.P.; Bro. Sean MacNamara of Ireland, who has been
carrying it forward there as an associate since 1973; Jane
McLaughlin who restored the Woods Hole Garden in 1982 and has
written a definitive monograph and a number of book chapters on
it; Vincenzina Krymow, author of "Mary's Flowers, Gardens, Legends
and Meditations"; and some 10 other Associates who have joined in
the work through the Internet and are making major contributions.
As a more personal note, I should mention that my own commitment
to Mary's Gardens was a fruit of 1) a Marian study group initiated
by senior member of our then parish in 1950, under the direction
of an area priest who inspired us to make the de Montfort
Consecration to Jesus through Mary, in accordance with "True
Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary; 2) and then a Catholic social
action group of some parents at a school attended by our our
daughters - inspired by the Mother Superior Principal, and under
the direction of the Community's spiritual director and confessor
priest, who was Professor of Ascetic and Mystical Theology at our
diocesan seminary and who instructed and guided us in the personal
interior spiritual formation needed for such action, as set forth,
for example, in Father Chauminade's "The Soul of the Apostolate".
While I and others have set forth the background and the principal
aspects of the work in the series of expositional developmental
articles, now put on the website, it has been the receipt of
letters, and now e-mail messages, from persons, such as yourself,
and the opportunity to reply to the unique insights expressed,
that has been a special joy of this work, in the Communion of
Saints.
To share this joy with others I have been posting to the
administered website Chat and Photos Room - initiated a year or so
ago - excerpts from some of these exchanges, such as yours. In a
ten foot shelf of 45 years of postal correspondence files, and in
the digital archives of our first five years of Internet e-mail
files, there is a multitude of such exchanges, from which I hope
to post a number retroactively.
In this, I am adding to our Chat exchange the above excerpt from
your Feb 22 message, and this reply.
Again, Vicki, sincere thanks, and prayerful best wishes,
Mar 19 2002, John
I have found to be unsupported the hope expressed in my earlier
messages that what I was told (or thought I was told) was the
botanical name of Peruvian Lily - "Astromaria" - indicated this
beautiful flower might been known in folk tradition as "Mary's
Star".
Thus, the other day while waiting in the checkout line at Border's
bookstore, I saw a new world plant encyclopedia, "The Plant Book",
on display, and in checking the index found out that the correct
botanical name for Peruvian lily is "Alstroemeria".
Then - surprise! - I noted that a yellow Peruvian lily, similar to
the one of which I sent you an e-mail photo, was, from the hundreds
of flower photos in the book, chosen by the editors of this
encyclopeia as one of the few used as illustrations on the book
jacket.
Further, the book contained something for which I have been looking
for years - a world map of climatic temperature zones. We have
had e-mail inquiries from some 100 countries, but aside from North
America and Europe I have not previously known for sure the
climates for many areas as the basis for suggesting appropriate
Flowers of Our Lady for cultivation. Now, to this end, the book is
part of my library.
As I mentioned, Peruvian Lilies have long been one of my favorite
cut flowers. One of the reasons for this, in addition to its
beauty (and its two-weeks' longivity as a cut flower), is that it
is one of the flowers whose bouquets especially quicken for me a
sense of Mary's presence.
Father Emil Neubert, in his "Life of Union with Mary", speaks of
the gift of the sense of Mary's presence experienced by persons
prayerfully devoted and consecrated to her. For Mary Gardeners
this sense may first be experienced in the garden from repeated
contemplation of Mary's symbolic flowers; and then centered on her
statue. From her experience of this, Frances Crane Lillie, founder
of the first public U. S. Mary Garden - beside the Angelus Tower
she had given to St. Joseph's Church in Woods Hole, Massachusets -
entitled her leaflet introducing the garden and listing its Flowers
of Our Lady for visitors, "Our Lady in Her Garden".
Once the sense of Mary's presence has been experienced in the Mary
Garden, it is then experienced elsewhere. Historically, it was
probably first experienced in the waysides and countrysides. In
this, St. Bernard, in his "Sermons on the Song of Songs",
distinguishes between the flowers of the countryside, the flowers
of the garden, and the flowers of the chamber. We might add to
this the flowers of the altar.
The massed flower colonies of the fields and waysides are apt first
to quicken a sense of God' beauty as shown forth in Creation.
Rising from this to contemplation of the beauty of God, we then
come to see, illuminatively, the aura of God's beauty in the
flowers of Creation - from which we rise, further, to contemplation
of God's radiance, then seeing all resplendent earth as mirroring
the radiance of God's face,
As we encounter flower clumps or individual flowers in countryside
or wayside they are seen as intrinsic earthly archetypes,
signatures, mirrors or correspondences of Mary, in accordance with
the revelation to Isaiah of the Virgin Birth of the Redeemer under
the imagery of the miraculously blossoming Rod of Jesse (Isaiah
2:11).
This scriptural symbol of the Blessed Virgin was seen by the Church
Fathers as the revealed basis for the reference of all flowers to
Mary, the "Flower of flowers" (Chaucer), as her symbols and
signatures - as with the "Rose of Sharon" and "Lily of the
Valleys", from the Song of Songs.
Drawing on this basic scriptural attribution of flowers to Mary,
numerous further flower images were then employed by the Church
Fathers and the saints in their praise and veneration of Mary -
with consequent adoption in the liturgy. Thus, St. Bernard spoke
of Mary as,
"The rose of charity, the lily of chastity,
the violet of humility. . . and the golden
gillyflower of heaven"
In medieval times the basic symbol adopted for the "Rod of Jesse"
was the rose, as in the central rose windows of cathedrals - in
accordance with the lines from Dante,
"Behold the Rose,
wherein the Divine Word was made incarnate"
and also as in the Christmas carol,
"Lo, How a Rose 'ere Blooming".
Thus, as encountered in nature, flower clumps, especially those of
human proportions, quickened for those of Christian tradition and
teaching a sense of Mary's presencene, from which these flowers
were given names such as "Madonna". Other individual flowers of
smaller size but with symbolic form or markings which brought Mary
to mind, were also named for her, such as the yellow zinnia, "the
Virgin", as it first blooms, with a single haloed glorious flower
"head" above its foliage "body"; and Vriesia mariae or Painted
Feather with its markings resembling the miraculous image of Our
Lady of Guadalupe. Other flowere were named for Mary because of
their characteristic growth in certain locations: Our Lady of the
Meadow; Our Lady of the Lake; Mary in the Corn; Our Lady by the
Gate, etc. Similarly, certain flowers of Scripture were identified
by the Church Fathers with Mary: "Flower of the Field" and
"Lily-of-the Valley"
Indoors in the chamber, bouquets, like flower clumps in nature,
serve also to quicken the sense of Mary's presence. In church, the
Real Presence of Jesus in the reserved Eucharist in the altar
taberbacle is accompanied contemplatively by a sense, also, of
Mary's presence, through her inseperable union with him; but this
sense of Mary's presence in the church is quickened directly by
the flowers of the altar. Likewise, the sense of Mary's presence
is quickened by the flowers prescribed for the table altars of
Legion of Mary meetings.
And, certain flower bouquets - through their forms, colors and/or
markings - are especially quickening of the sense of Mary's
presence, and, as mentioned, the Peruvian Lily is one of these for
me.
John
Mar 20 2002, Vicki
Sorry to hear about the botanical name, I had already called it
Astromaria in my heart. Yes, it is a Mary flower for me too.
Do not want to raise false hopes, but could Alstroemeria be the
corruption of another Spanish tongue such as Catalunean (Catalan)
or Spanish Gaelic (Gallego)? Remember how I seemed to find in the
name Azucena the meaning 'a su Cena'?
Tomorrow I am taking my little boys to this place where they
specialise in statues to acquire a "Santisima Virgen Maria" (Most
Holy Virgin Mary) for our backyard. I am having our small Mary
Garden dedicated in May. We are very happy about it!
This shade Mary garden is the sitting area in our small orchard
(just an urban orchard), so we can sit and there and pray-or just
plain enjoy being around Her.
I will send you pictures when the plants are more established, my
hostas are only two years old, and still looked a bit scrawny last
season.
Peace and God Bless,
Mar 21 2002, John
Great to hear things are moving ahead with your and your boys'
Mary Garden. Planting time normally doesn't come in the Northeast
until April 1, although this year it could be earlier due to the
most mild winter. What part of the country are you in?
Re. the origins, and possible corruption, of Alstroemeria, these
things are discoverable in the "floras" (field botanists' books)
for the various countries. All our Tropicals and South American
research was done many years ago by Bonnie Roberson, and I don't
know how much she checked into Peru.
Just picked up two beautiful bunches from our corner florist - one
orange and one red. One arrangements for classrooms, etc. could
be of white, red, and yellow Astrelmeria bouquets - symbolizing
the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries - before Our Lady's
statue. More permanently white, red and yellow miniature roses.
Prayerful best wishes for Holy Week and Easter.
Mar 22 2002, Vicki
Our planting time is around May 18. We are in Burlington, Ontario.
Yesterday was a very special day, the image that we bought for the
back yard is "Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal". This is the name
of my beloved parish in Lima, Peru: my heart has taken me there
often with nostalgia. It touched my heart that the image the
non-Catholic sales person had set aside based on my requirements
of size and budget limitations (stay at home Mom) was what I had
not even dared to express as an 'I want'. What are the chances of
this happening? It is, to me, just another expression of love
from Our Lady. How comforting!
We will be moving around some rather large logs to make a bit of a
grotto, with maiden ferns, and some other shade loving plants. I
hope to find caladiums in pink and red. The rest will be put in
place when we have a better 'feel' for the spot.Ê
I have joy in my heart, John!
I can hardly wait for the Easter Vigil, my favourite mass of the
year!
Peace and every blessing!
Mar 23 2002, John
Noting that you are in Ontario, I suggest that you e-mail Lauretta
Santarossa and make her acquaintance some time when you are going
to be in Toronto. Lauretta is a close colleague in the work of
Mary Gardens, and I call your attention to the website Feb 2, 2002
Chat entries regarding her own Mary Garden - from June, 1977 - and
to its links at the upper right hand corner of the opening page to
reprints of 1999 articles about it in the Catholic Times and the
National Post.
Lauretta, Director of Sales and of Marketing of Novalis publishers
in Toronto, was instrumental in the publication of Vincenzina
Krymow's 1999 "Mary's Flowers, Gardens, Legends and Meditations"
(scheduled for a 2nd, paperback, printing this May) and has
conducted Mary Garden workshops at the Catholic college of the
University of Toronto.
You mention the expression of love from Our Lady in leading you
the statue of "Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal" for your Mary
Garden. Note, in the Catholic New Times article, how Loretta was
led by Our Lady to Mary Gardening through the suggestion of a
student whose assistance she had obtained in designing her garden.
I am sending a copy of this message to Loretta - who can get
aquainted with your Mary Gardening, and our exchanges, from the
Feb 14, 2002 ff Chat postings.
We get numerous website visits from Canada, daily.
You mention planning to include pink and red Caladiums in your
shady Mary Garden. In our research these show as both "Jesus'
Heart" and "Mary's Heart" (also, "The Virgin's Mantle") and I have
come to think of the red as "Jesus' Heart" and the pink as "Mary's
Heart".
Yes, the Easter Vigil Mass is a special favorite of mine, too, and
used to be fully celebrated on Saturday mornings with the
pre-Vatican II litgurgy. Note that the Servite sacramental
blessing of Mary's floral crowns used to be given on Holy
Saturday:
"O almighty everlasting God we beseech thee to bless
these flowers . . . that there may be in them goodness,
virtue, tranquility, peace, victory, abundance of good
things, the plenitude of blessing, thanksgiving to God
the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and a most
pleasing commemoration of the glorious Mother of God -
that in whatsoever places they shall have been humbly
received trustingly stored up and reverently kept by thy
faithful, they may put forth an odor of virtue and
sweetness."
(From a little leaflet given to me in 1954 by Servite Father James
M. Keane - Chicago's then "TV Priest" - with whom I was able to
visit when in Chicago on business, and who assisted us massively
through "Queen of the Missions" magazine, which he edited, and in
which he published several of our articles, and our then research,
as well as several Mary Garden articles of his own.)
Re. Peru, you may have noted that in the "Mary Garden Prayer" we
include in the invocations:
St. Rose of Lima, to whom the boy Jesus and his Mother
were present in the garden.
Did you ever visit St. Rose's garden, which a 1950's pamphlet I
have says is open (in a cloistered convent?) to the public just
one day a year?
Prayerful best wishes to you and your boys for Holy Week and
Easter.
Jun 22 2002, Vicki
My little grotto is coming along quite beautifully, it is such a
sweet thing to invite Our Lady to our homes, and hearts this way!
All of my family, and visitors as well, enjoy it.
Underneath the grotto built of reclaimed logs a small field mouse
has taken residence. I just cannot get myself to bother brother
Mouse. Imagine, where has he sought sanctuary!Ê
I am trying to identify Athyrium, (Lady Fern) I have two beautiful
varieties: niponicum "Pictum" and filix-femina "Frizelliae". Are
these "Our Lady Ferns" or just plain Lady ferns? The filix-femina
reminds me so much of braids, it is a very delicate, graceful
thing. I have planted these tucked beside the logs of the grotto,
and hope that my heart was right in the choice.
The other question is, here in Canada we grow a bush called "Rose
of Sharon" was this named to honour our Lady? Please, forgive me,
I do not have the Latin name handy. In any event, In have planted
two in between the grapes that drape the wooden fence. I hope so
much that these were named to honour our "Rose of Sharon".
I have shared some of the knowledge learned from the website with
some friends who also have a deep love of Our Lady.
Before I forget, my little boys and I have succeeded in starting
six 'Angel Baby" roses from seed, for our Mary Garden. We are so
happy! The strawberries we started from seed are in hanging
baskets across from our little grotto.
I have not forgotten my promise to take pictures and send them to
you. I started a new job after being home for quite a while -
sorry I haven't kept my word yet. Yes, continue the Chat
postings. We feel so blessed with this inspiration to plant a
Mary Garden, we want to share our joy.
Peace and every blessing, to you and your family,
Jun 25 2002, John
Thanks for your message of June 22. Good to hear from you again.
You write, "it is such a sweet thing to invite Our Lady to our
homes..."
Are you familiar with Diane Schoemperlen's recent book, "Our Lady of
the Lost and Found" - an imaginative novel of Our Lady's extensive
visits to the author's home. It makes an interesting reference to
Mary Gardens on p. 159 ff:
"We talked about gardening . . . Mary was quite knowledgeable
about the subject and lamented the fact that, because of her
peripatetic lifestyle, she was not able to have a garden of
her own.
"I have to let other people do my gardening for me, she said,
and went on to tell me about Mary Gardens . . ."
Vicki, I enjoyed hearing about the field mouse making its home in
your grotto Mary Garden. In my second home Mary Garden a mother
rabbit gave birth to three little ones under the thyme around the
statue. You may have read my 1955 article, "In Mary's Garden", I
which I describe, and have a photo, of how in my first home Mary
Garden some birds wove a nest around the foot of the Marian
Figurene in the little pole-mounted "wayside" shelter - of which
my then 5-year old daughter said, "They saw there wasn't any
straw in the manger."
Many interesting things happen in Mary Gardens. In the Idaho Mary
Garden of our late Partner, Bonnie Roberson, all the lily blooms
continually faced the statue - in all seasons, at all times of the
day, regardless of sun position etc.
A Canadian gardener noticed that a large bird continuously
hovered, over her garden. When her daughter took a week's canoe
trip in Maine (Alagash River, I took the trip myself as a boy), a
similar or the same bird followed over the canoe during the trip.
These little providential caresses heighten our joy of the sense
Our Lady's presence with us in the Garden. (As Mediatrix of all
graces, she is present by her action wherever the movements of
grace are experienced). One correspondent recently wrote, "May
Our Lady walk with you in your garden."
Athyrium filix-femina is the "Lady Fern" of our research. This is
the species found in the wild throughout most world temperate
zones, including Europe. The commercially available variety, A.
filix-femina "Frizelliae", is a selectively bred strain, but is
still the species, A. filix-femina.
The Oxford English Dictionary says, (under "Lady") that "Lady",
"Lady's" and, "Ladies" in the older English plant names are almost
always foreshortenings of "Our Lady". Similarly, "Virgin",
"Virgin's" and "Mary's" are considered in most cases as referring
to the Virgin Mary. "Maiden" and "Queen" in popular plant names
are frequently paralleled by "Lady" and "Mary" in alternate
namings. On this basis we take Lady Fern to have been and be a
symbol of Our Lady.
A. niponicum is a Japanese species and is not found specifically
in the Marian research. However, the entire genus is identified
in horticultural encyclopedias as "lady ferns", and I see from
photos that the appearance of A. niponicum is similar to that of
A. filix-femina.
The people of the medieval countrysides were not botanists, or
even literate, and plants names were associated with symbolic
appearance - so that several species of a genus of similar
appearance show up at times with the same religious names in the
research, as do also sometimes two or more geneses of similar
appearance.
For example, a number of European geneses have shown up with the
name "marigold" (Mary's Gold)"; and when the European missionaries
went to the sub-tropical and tropical Americas they gave the name
"marigold" to the species of the genus Tagetes encountered there
(not native to Europe), on the basis of its color; and the
numerous species, all yellow, of Tagetes all commonly bare the
name Marigold.
Likewise, a given plant was frequently given a number of different
religious names from different symbolisms seen in iys form, color
or bloom period. As it is the symbolic forms and colors of plants
in the Mary Garden that quicken our pictorial imagination, I find
my imagination reflectively, meditatively and prayerfully
quickened by some plants not found associated with Mary in the
research but whose forms resemble plants which are.
One instance of this is that of the spathe and spadix symbolism of
the English wild flower, "Lady-Lords" (Cuckoo Pint, Arum
maculatum). This name was evidently given because the distinctive
spathe and spadix abstractly brought to mind the frontal
representations of Mary with the child Jesus seated in her lap,
"Our Lady and Our Lord", adopted by the Church as symbol of Mary
as the Mother of God, after she was so defined at the Council of
Ephesus (431) - and so represented in the medieval wood carvings
and cathedral tympani sculptures of the "Madonna in Majesty" and
"Seat of Wisdom' - the spathe representing Mary and the spadix,
Jesus. Thus I am quickened to think of, and pray to, Mary as
Mother of God when I see other spathe and spadix plants, such as
Jack-in-the pulpit, or the widely found "Peace Lilies"
(Spathiphyllum wallisii and hybrids) of our shopping centers and
malls.
In respect to the Lady-Fern reminding you of braids, see the
"Mary's Hair" and "Mary's Tresses" (torn from her head) symbols of
Mary's sorrows in CHAT: Jan 12, 2002 - "Flower Symbols of Our
Lady's Sorrows".
The "Rose of Sharon' shrub (or small tree) you refer to is no
doubt the widely cultivated pinkish-white bloomed Hibiscus
syriacus.
From the prophecy of the virgin motherhood of the Messiah,
Emmanuel, in Isaiah 11:1,
"And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse,
and a flower shall rise up out of his root."
all flowers were seen by the Church Fathers as revealed symbols or
signatures of Mary, and thus all scriptural references to flowers
were referred to her, such as, from the Song of Solomon
(Canticles) 2:1 (King James version of the Bible),
"I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys."
In the Catholic Douay version of the Bible, and also some other
versions, the Latin from the Vulgate version was translated
"Flower of the Field", instead of "Rose of Sharon", but "Rose of
Sharon" stuck as a name with some 10 or so flowers, but most
widely with Hibiscus syriacus. Sharon is a plain in the
Holy Land.
Students of the flowers of the Bible consider the Holy
Land flowers of the field actually referred to as Anemones
(Amenone coronaria), although this species does not show up with
any Mary-name in the research.
I'll look forward to receiving some pictures of your grotto Mary
Garden when you have some you'd like to share with others in our
Chat and Photos. I assume you can send them as e-mail digital
attachments.
One consequence of Chat correspondence postings is that I explain
things more fully and definitively for sharing with all Chat
visitors (as in this message) - and so they can serve as
click-cross-indexing references from other subsequently posted
messages.
Prayerful best wishes to you and your family,
(Continued)