Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon. (Song of Songs 4:13-15)

Love is verdent, moist, and fertile. Love stimulates the senses with fragrance and color.

The Beloved nourishes the Lover or, at least, Love nourishes the Lover.

Another translation offers, "Your branches are an orchard..." The root word meaning to send out, stretch out, extend.

Love stretches us, causes us to grow, transforms us, and can - if we allow - restore us to the everflowing reality of original creation.

The Beloved is pardes: a Persian loan word for pleasure garden. The Greeks made the same word paradeisos. In love we return to paradise.