Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

Http://www.thyorisons.com/#Gertrude_Garden – St Gertrude in the Garden

St Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of gardeners . . . . Mentally ill people (especially those with a rat phobia), travellers, pilgrims . . . , recently dead people, and graves. . . She’s associated with mice, which represent souls in purgatory. – extracted from http://www.jesterbear.com/Aradia/SantaGertrude.html

St Gertrude of Nivelles is the patron saint of gardeners:

HAMLET (1.2.137)
…’tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

HAMLET [speaking to Gertrude] (3.4.167-168)
. . . Do not spread the compost on the weeds,
To make them ranker.

“Medieval travelers drank a toast known in German as the ‘Gertrudenminte’ or ‘Sinte Geerts Minne’ in the saint’s honour before setting out on their journey.”

Perhaps Hamlet was making a sarcastic allusion to the “Sinte Geerts Minne” toast when he forced Claudius to drink from the cup that had poisoned Gertrude, before Claudius set out on his journey to hell:

HAMLET (5.2.337-338)
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

St Gertrude of Nivelles is also the patron saint of mentally ill people, especially those with a rat phobia:

HAMLET (3.4.27)
How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
CLAUDIUS (3.2.232-233)
What do you call the play?
HAMLET
The Mouse-trap.

“Gertrude of Nivelles’ symbol, the mouse, is said related to the souls in purgatory.”

FRANCISCO (1.1.11)
Not a mouse stirring.
GHOST (1.5.13-17)
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away.

St Gertrude’s Feast Day is March 17, the same as St Patrick’s, who is also a keeper of purgatory.

HORATIO (1.5.148-149)
There’s no offence, my lord.
HAMLET
Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio, And much offence too.

St Gertrude of Nivelles is also the patron saint of “travellers, pilgrims . . . , recently dead people, graves.”

After Hamlet had been driven mad by listening to the the Ghost’s forbidden tale of the secret’s of his prison-house, Hamlet appears before Ophelia with “no hat upon his head” (2,1,87). Later Hamlet speaks of “The undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns”(3,1,87).Still later Ophelia sings of Hamlet with a cockle hat (4.5.28) Pilgrims wore cockleshells on their hats. Ophelia’s song foreshadows Hamlet’s “pilgrimage” to the “undiscover’d country” of her “chaste treasure” in the “womb of earth” (her grave). With Gertrude standing by, Hamlet returns from that undiscovered country with his sanity restored. See http://www.thyorisons.com/#Rebirth – The Rebirth of Hamlet

For other quotes about “the garden,” it’s stretching it a bit, but you could search the play for “violets,” which are mentioned at least three times, and for “willow” for the description of Ophelia gathering flowers before she died. There’s also Polonius saying “Let me be no assistant for a state, / But keep a farm and carters.”

There’s the Captain, who said

Captain
Truly to speak, and with no addition,
We go to gain a little patch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;
Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole
A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.

First Clown
Why, there thou say’st: and the more pity that
great folk should have countenance in this world to
drown or hang themselves, more than their even
Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient
gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers:
they hold up Adam’s profession.

Then there’s all the talk everywhere about old Hamlet (or Gonzago) being poisoned in his garden (or orchard).

And don’t forget Osric, who’s “spacious in the possession of dirt.”

GardenersCardiff answers:

There are two main places you should look. The first will be the book of Job. God and the Devil have an extended conversation that results in God allowing the Devil to put Job to the test.
Job 1:6-12
Job 2:1-6

Another instance where the Devil speaks is in the temptation of Christ.
Matthew 4:1-11
Luke 4:1-13

GardenersCardiff answers:

Having a sister is like having a friend you cant get rid of no matter what you do, they’ll still be there
She’s my sister! You break her heart and I break her face!
We’re the type of friends that pick each other up when they fall, then shove them right back down, and laugh
I’m smiling because I’m your sister, I’m laughing because there’s nothing you can do about it
A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost
More than sisters, we’re partners in crime
A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life
I love my sister, it was nice growing up with some one like you, some one to lean on, some one to count on, some one to tell on…..
Big Sister
My sister is a nuisance, my sister is a pain. If it was up to me I’d leave her outside in the rain.
But if you tease my sister, or be mean to her at all, I’ll always be there to catch her when she falls
Sisters are different flowers from the same garden
Sisters by chance, Friends by choice
Sister, you taught me everything i really needed to know and to think you were only in sixth grade at the time!
This next one is my favorite (its more for a card though)
Me and you is friends, you smile, I smile, you hurt, i hurt, you cry i cry,you jump off bridge, i gonna miss your emails