Almond trees, poppies, and cyclamen

The train ride from Jerusalem to Bet Shemesh has always been beautiful, but last Tuesday with the almond trees in bloom along the valley, sometimes below us, sometimes right outside the windows, it was spectacular. In places, with the green groundcover, they formed an eastern carpet beyond the ability of the best weaver or knotter. Really good eyes could see the paler cyclamen.

Today green laced almond-blossom white.

To think, all that beauty and almonds, too.

Copyright 2013, Jane Schulzinger Fox

Talbiyeh

This week's municiality walking tour covered familiar territory, but I always learn something new with a guide. Why is the Jerusalem theater where it is? Mrs. Sherover, who donated the money for the original building, wanted it across the street from her house. Unfortunately the neighbors have managed to keep public transportation at a distance. The guide insisted that a municipal theater needs access by public transportation, but the theater seems to be doing very well with the nearest bus stop three blocks away.

The plaza in front of the theater has a lovely view -- and lots of benches, which are comfortable unless wet, which they too seldom are this year. Spring,m summer, and fall festivals, fairs, and happenings enliven this plaza. Inside, all year, concerts, movies, dance performances, plays, comedy acts, art exhibits, lectures, concerts in the lobby, and a restaurant with very good salads and tasty soups attract crowds age 5 and younger to at 90 and older.

Copyright 2011 Jane S. Fox

Snow Arrives

• Yesterday afternoon the heavy rain turned to wet snow (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/snow.html ).
• By 7, the police blocked the twisty roads into Jerusalem. The city grew muffled. Wet white covered cars and trees, streets and sidewalks. Kids stayed up late to play in the snow. If it snows when you are in Jersualem, go outside, even if your shoes are not waterproof. Enjoy the atmosphere, and stuff crumpled newspaper in your shoes when you return to your hotel. (http://www.jerusalemshots.com/Jerusalem_en2-417.html )
• At night, all precipitation stopped. By 8 AM liquid water once more coursed down the streets, this time from melting snow.
• In the shade, walked-on slush makes sidewalks look threatening. The sun is warm, the breeze light.
• Clothed by LandsEnd from throat to wrists and ankles, I am warm. If traveling to Israel in winter, remember that a set or two of silk long underwear takes up almost no space.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox.

Watershed

• Rain glorious rain. Hours and hours of heavy rain. The forecast still says snow for the afternoon.
• A guide said that the top of Agron (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/walkng.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/4-to-terra-sancta.html et al.) is the change in watershed.
• Water courses down Agron headed for the Dead Sea. What is streaming down Aza is on its way to the Mediterranean.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Snow

• Snow is predicted for Jerusalem. It depends, says the meteorologist, on seven tenths of a degree (celsius) temperature drop tomorrow afternoon.
• Already the excitement is building. The education department has set up an information center. The municipality has checked its emergency plans.
• At the little store around the corner (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/charity.html ) Shlomi says he'll sleep in town tonight. He lives in Mvaseret, a suburb down a long hill from here and up another. "With the first flake they'll be lined up to buy bread and milk," he says.
• "And will the bread and milk arrive?"
• "Of course. Bread, milk, and newspapers are aways here before I am."
• The snow will not be on the ground for more than a day. By Thursday afternoon it will all be gone.
• Hmm. If they close the Tnuva dairy in Jerusalem, will there be milk in the stores on the day of next year's snow?

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sidewalk Cafes

• We want rain. By now, even people who hate grey skies want rain (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ). Without rain in the north, the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) will soon become a skateboard park. Without rain here, the aquifers will become more and more depleted as the water board pumps and pumps to keep faucets flowing.
• In October and November, we had two or three days of rain. Since then, unfulfilled promises.
• During the day, it is shirtsleeve-warm in the sun. Towards evening, restaurants with tables on patios or on the sidewalk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mint.html ) spread awnings and to them attach waterproof walls, clear on the street side. When it is truly cold (in Mediterranean terms) tall braziers will heat the space.
• I sit out on my balcony. This may be the last sunny day to enjoy. I hope.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Green Grass

• In the Moon Forest the grass under the trees is green from the early rains(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ).
• In parks and gardens, drip irrigation (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html ), is turned off until late spring.
• The unbuilt valleys ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html ), the distant hillsides (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html ), turn from brown and grey to green.
• Grey comes to the winter skies to bring the green.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Crembo

• To Israelis of a certain age, crembo means cooling weather, rain, and going to the macolet by yourself to buy a foil-wrapped ball of chocolate-covered fluff.
• In the summer, pocket money went for artikim (ice cream on a stick) or kartiv (popsicles) or, if you had a little extra change, cassata.
• Before widespread air conditioning, crembo had to wait for winter, or be transported in rare refrigerated trucks. On the counter of the local grocery store, the chocolate coating would melt. Even today, once out of the air conditioned supermarket or candy store, the chocolate would quickly squish over fingers. What do crembo factories make in the summer?
• The internal fluff now comes in strawberry, chocolate, and mocha as well as the original white, but crembo still waits for November and grows scarce towards the end of February, when hamentashen appear.
• From November through December, crembo shares counter space with soufganiot (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/soufganiot.html ), trucked in from bakeries and displayed open to the air beside the foil-wrapped winter treats.

Copyright 2006 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.

Pump

• Watch the map for street names. Soon after the 4 turns left on Emek Refaim, where the last bit of HaMagid (closed to vehivles and considered beneath the mapmakers’ notice) opposite Wedgewood, you can see (on the left) a pump above a rainwater cistern – now of historical interest only. If you miss it in this direction, you can see it on the right on your way back.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html Walking through the various neighborhoods of Nakhalaot, I see many "well heads" (leading not to ground-water wells but to rain-water cisterns) but no pumps. Scrap metal is valuable.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

One Block from Agripas

• Agrippas Street (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/trompe-loeil.html ) runs up from King George V (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/george-v.html ) and then (with a name change) down towards Shderot Ben Tsvi. To the northeast is Shouk Mahaneh Yehuda (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/shesek.html ).
• A turn into one of the alleys on the other side of the street takes you into a quiet neighborhood from a hundred years in the past. Here you can see the fantastic doors of the synagog established in one of the old buildings by the Sefardi community from the Old City. At one house, purple flowers pour over the wall like a silent waterfall; at another, red blossoms. The dark shade of a small, square park beckons. Here a family has renovated with Jerusalem stone that the air has not yet aged. There someone closed a balcony, illegally, with beaten tin.
• The stone buildings ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/stone-houses.html) block off the city’s noise.
• See http://www.e-map.co.il/eng_index.asp for maps. Give each screen time to come up completely!
• Throughout the neighborhood, note the slightly raised paving that marks rectangular areas over now-dry rain-water cisterns. On most, a cement-sealed well-hear marks the old access point. Collecting rainwater for irrigation seems like such a good idea until you think of mosquitoes. (See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html )

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox