The Missing Garden

The sogra is visiting for a fortnight or so and as a result, I've been doing quite a bit more touring than usual. Yesterday, we went to the Jardim Botanico. Breaking my vow never to wear sneakers anywhere outside the gym, I suited up like a proper tourist and prepared to do some serious walking. Of course MY camera had to eat the brand-new batteries that worked fine at home during the bus ride, so I relied on my photo-happy MIL to do the honors. We snapped away at the orchids, the carnivorous plants, the ancient and not-so-ancient trees, the fun "sensorial" garden with a giant colorful spider, the stinky jaca fruit...and tried to take pictures of the "Biblical garden." Here's the English language description:




A different idea for a garden. I thought this would be interesting, as we just had a discussion a few months back on myrtle in a Bible study group. It was mentioned in a Psalm, and most of us had no idea what the plant looked or smelled like, making understanding the poem a bit difficult.

We walked all around this sign. Forwards, backwards, around the looping trails to the left and to the right. This is what we saw:





I tend to pride myself (shame, shame) on my Biblical knowledge. And I'm pretty sure that the Americas never feature in ANY of the Jewish, Catholic or Protestant key writings. We had a good laugh. Where are the olive trees, the mustard, the mandrake and the figs? Was this just a joke? Or did someone go and pull up all the plants?