Did the rose have a thorn? Genesis 22, Is. 11, and other ramblings

In Torah study we discussed that in the Hebrew the verb translated in English, "and Abraham 'took' the knife", in reality means more than simply picking the knife up. It means not only picking it up but also a motion downward, the idea in the verb being that taking up the knife also equals striking down with it . I imagine there was an angel standing next to Avraham, making sure the knife could not go any further. For Avraham had to kill his son. There was no other way. And when he "raised" the knife, he was in the act of killing him. He didn't hold it up in the air and hope G-d would stop him. He went on to the end, and began to strike with the knife, and then, only then did G-d say "Stop!" I used to wonder about this. Why kill your son? G-d would never ask that, would He? And yet, how else could Avraham's faith actually be proved? If HaShem had said, "Avraham, would you do anything I tell you to?", of course Avraham would have replied, "Yes, Lord, you know I will." And yet. We now understand, that as opposed to our old, Greek mindset, the Hebrew knows that a mental assertion of obedience is almost useless. Unless the obedience is shown by action, the mental faith is dead. If Avraham had stopped short at any time in the killing of his son, he would not have been obedient. So let's remember that truly, Ya'akov was right when he wrote, "faith without works [obedience] is dead." Let's kill those Yitzchaks in our lives, and not hold the knife back, but swing it down with all our might. For the blessing comes when we follow it to the very end.
Rabbi also raised an interesting point about the Garden of Eden. How do we know what it was like? When we read our Haftorah portion, in Is. 11:6-8 it says:
"The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest."
Since it says the animals are all friends, and the children play with snakes, we read back into the beginning, and assume this was what it was like. And yet nowhere does it say in the Bible that the Garden was a safe place, where no animals were eaten, and the rose had no thorns, and there was no pain or death. The Rabbis debate this issue. Did the rose have thorns or not? I lean on the side that it did have thorns, that G-d gave us the commandment to rule over the land, and if the land wasn't somewhat chaotic, what are we supposed to rule? The thorns were there, but they didn't detract from the enjoyment of the beauty, and as Adam cut them back from overgrowing the path, he rejoiced in the order he was creating. A perfect garden without any pain, death, and thorns would be pretty easy to rule over. If there were no carnivores, then why are the lions and tigers and bears that are around today created to do the job so well? Wouldn't rabbits have taken over the Garden, without anything to check them? Unless Adam was a lot faster than me, I think he would have had a hard time catching all of them. So maybe the "perfect" world we have always imagined had a lot more hardship in it than we thought. But the Rabbis say that labor is good, toil is not. G-d made us to labor, to do the work of ruling, but the toil came after, when Adam rejected HaShem's order and tried to create his own. So now we must all toil to transfor our little plot of life into a managable garden, and it's a lot harder than simply cutting back a few roses from the path, and giving them to your perfect spouse. But then again, watching the garden grow is worth all the effort, all the labor, and all the obedience.