Botanical Gardens

According to a plaque, the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens were founded in 1953, long before I arrived in Jerusalem. Yet I had never been. All around is greenery, here trees from Australia, there plants from southern Africa, but the sound of traffic on Herzog below never stops. On Jerusalem streets, only one block from any main street, traffic noise fades to nothing. But on the hillsides of the Botanical Gardens are no buildings to muffle the sound. I hope that Jerusalem's rapacious builders are kept at bay, leaving botanical refreshment to contrast with the noise. Within the garden is a monument to a man in Japan, who in the mid=1970s, had been praying for peace for 20 years.

Copyright 2009 Jane S. Fox

Windows

• The windows on our apartment, double glazed, fit snugly into frames well-fixed in the wall. When the handle is horizontal, the window is a casement that opens inward. When the handle points up, a rug tilts the window so it is open from the top. Handle down, window tightly locked.
• Wish I had windows like this in Wisconsin when an Alberta Clipper blows.

This entry belongs in 2006.

Copyrigh 2007 Jane S. Fox

Private Guides

• If you've done a guided tour of Israel and discovered that your choices for the next guided tour cover much the same ground, you can go around on your own, or hire a guide.
• Many sites offer English tours: for example, Ir Daveed (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/city-of-david.html ), the Israel Museum (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/model.html ), the Municipality (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/valley-street.html ). Egged's Line 99 around Jerusalem (http://www.egged.co.il/Eng/main.asp?lngCategoryID=2773 ) provides commentary in English as do the other tours run by Egged and United Tours (http://www.unitedtours.co.il/map.html ).These tours let you come to Israel on your own and pick where you want to go.
• Although you can find licensed guides on the Internet, I recommend contacting Beit Shmuel and asking to be put in contact with one of their English-speaking guides.
  972 2-620 3461 or Doron_yosha@wupj.org.il
• Yad Ben Tzvi has excellent guides, but I don't know whether the organizaiton will set up private tours. You can try them at 972 2 539 8855 or had@ybz.org.il
• Tell them what interests you: architecture, art, bakeries, crusaders, literary references, neighborhoods, nineteenth-century history, prophets, travelers to Jerusalem ...; or list things you want to see and learn about. Tell them how much you want to walk or climb and how sure-footed you are or are not.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Rain

• October brings the early rains (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/solar-water-heater.html ).
• Each summer day newspapers reported how many centimeters the surface of the Kinneret (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Kinneret ) had dropped. Now the level begins to rise. Though much of the water comes from artesian springs (http://home.att.net/~d.q.hall/tell_dan.htm ) fed thousands of years ago, rain has an immediate effect on the level of the world's lowest fresh-water lake. (Plus rain replenishes the groundwater for the future.)
• Jerusalem's water comes from springs tapping even older water, but we all bless these first rains.
• After downpours, drizzle, then sunshine. Clouds mass in glorious mounds from hill to hill. Light blazes through a gap, turning grey to gold-edged purple. Clouds disperse. The laundry dries. The first days of November are sunny and cloudless (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/beit-ticho.html), cool in the shade but hot after a long walk up Azza (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-down.html in the opposite direction) in the sun. At the first lookout on the Sherover Promenade, I take off my sweater.
• Six days later, rain again. Soon enough, Jerusalemites will forget agriculture, ecology, and the water cycle and hope for sunny days (though Jews who pray formally will continue prayes for rain until April, when the prescribe formula switches to a plea for dew).
• Today it is too warm for a waterproof coat. Rain drips and mists and drips again, fresh on my face like an imagined English May.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Solar Panels Mystery

• It is a mystery to me why the solar panels work so well in September.
• In the summer it does not rain. Dust collects on floors and tables, books and computer screens, blown in as yellow haze from the east or formed from the dry dirt around the thistles in uncultivated fields.
• Surely dust also covers the collector panels? And dust must block the photons whose energy converts to electricity (http://www.science.org.au/nova/005/005box03.htm ) to heat the water. Fewer photons, less electricity. Less electricity, cooler water.
• And yet the water gets hot each day until the Autumn rains fall (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/solar-water-heater.html ).
• A mystery with a solution no doubt, but still a mystery to me.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html describes the panels and water tanks as part of the view. Though not picturesque, they are beautiful in their meaning for the ecology (assuming that the negative effect of their manufacture, and disposal when theur usefulness has passed, does not outweigh the positive effect of decreased need for power plants and fossil fuel.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox.

Solar Water Heater

• From April through mid September the sun heated our water so hot that we warned guests of the danger of scalding.
• Clouds cut off the amount of energy (http://www.science.org.au/nova/005/005box03.htm ) available to heat the water, but clouds in the summer are few and fleeting.
• In the autumn, on rainy days we turn on the electric water heater, the way we did last February and March. About an hour gives us water hot enough for showers, two hours on cold days.
• It only rains from October through April (with the occasional storm surprising people into May), for a week or two in late fall or early winter, now and then in January and February, and, if all goes well, for several days in March or April. In the depths of winter, though, the sun is too low in the sky to heat the water as we need it.
• As far as I can tell, both the solar panels and the supplementary electric heater heat water in the same boiler, the same container, and it is on the roof, where it gets cold in the winter -- not Wisconsin cold, but too cold for insulation to keep the water hot over night.
• A week ago at dawn, something exploded on the roof next door. Steam shot out from the cluster of boilers.
• If we leave the electric heater on all night, will our boiler explode?

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Cistern

• The underground cistern on the grounds of the former Hansen’s Disease hospital is as large as a ballroom and more than a century old. Volunteers repaired its grates and access ports. The rainwater it collects irrigate the extensive gardens, which can be toured in English or Hebrew alternate Wednesday afternoons (02 56 11 044 to volunteer, 02 62 56 357 for tour reservations).
• The hospital’s grounds are part of the endangered "Moon Forest," which stretches along the slope across from the Jerusalem theater to below Gan HaVeredim (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/rose-gardens.html) . The tall, spare trees on delight land coveted by developers.
• For more information about water storage in Jerusalem see http://www.plumbingworld.com/historyjerusalem.html (ancient) and http://www.bagelhole.org/?page=321 (ancient and modern).
• You can see the paving over now dry cisterns in all the 19th century neighborhoods. http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/pump.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/one-block-from-agripas.html
• Collecting rainwater for irrigation sounds like a great idea until you think of mosquitoes. I don't think mosquitoes lay eggs in whitewash. (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/german-colony.html )

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox