'Benedictine' Roses and a 'John Pauline' Clematis. Report from the Oasis Garden

Ever since the planting season began this year, work in the garden has been slow. March was slightly better than usual from the point of view of fewer high winds and no hail storms. It was however quite cool and there was frequent rain. The swallows arrived late but built their nests as doughtily as ever, not this year, as has formerly been their wont, under out eaves. It was a relief not to have to discourage them. Perhaps they sensed it wasn't safe, and if so, they were right, as we had the front of the house painted towards the end of the month. Before that, the Holy Father went in the direction from which they had come and we had to follow him via kto and/or EWTN. Then, it was Easter before one could turn round, and more wonderful liturgies from Rome not to be missed.

I managed to get some potatoes in before May arrived and then the incessant rain began. Until two days ago, it has been the worst May in my memory of twenty years in this area. Gardening was impossible and so my wonderful plan for getting a great deal done during the week before the Holy Father set off for Jordan came to nothing. Then of course, a few hours before his plane left for Amman, my husband broke his leg............ The following week of shock and fear was taken up with anxious visits to the hospital alternating with the tension of viewing the albeit excellent TV coverage of 'The Pilgrim of Peace'. The rain continued and so at least I didn't have to feel guilty about not gardening!

During the first three weeks of the month, in frequent visits to the garden afforded by the short spells between rain storms, I noted that, as expected, the weeds were coming up with a vengeance. But I noted other things that I greeted with joy. I'm going to tell you about some of these because they demonstrate several things....first, what Cardinal Newman called 'God's little providences', second that gardening reflects the spiritual life in many ways, as I have tried to show in all my published books, (particularly in the Introduction to the first) but third, in recent weeks, I have come to a deepening awareness of things I've always known about gardening in its relation to the life of contemplative prayer and its results in action.

Last year by accident (?), I found in the supermarket plant sale, a clematis named for Pope John Paul II. Until then I had not been aware that such a clematis existed. Naturally, it came home with me and was planted in the Advent section of the garden against the eastern fence. We had terrible frosts during the winter and I thought it was dead. Not so. I discovered at Easter that it was very much alive and much more robust than it had been last year. It had begun to climb and was in bud. The flower opened whilst Pope Benedict was in the Holy Land, I cannot give the exact day, but I know that by the time our present Holy Father returned to the Vatican on May 15, that flower was fully open and is the size of a small saucer in diameter. It is white with purple stamens. Superfluous to labour the symbolism here. But perhaps not so, to admit that I wept by the eastern fence and thanked Pope John Paul, who I believe, interceded continually for his successor in circumstances much more difficult and complex that those he faced during his own visit to the Holy Land in 2000. It wasn't necessary for me to ask him to continue this intercession, only essential that I unite myself with it, which I did.

I think it is in the film 'The Pontificate of Reason' that Pope Benedict says to an interviewer very shortly after his election, that he feels 'the Holy Father' very close to him and that they still talk to each other. (At that stage Joseph Ratzinger had not properly realised that HE was now the Holy Father! But as they say, that is another story.)