Anne Frank's memorial in the forest

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In the final hour of daylight my town's touring group just made it to Ya'ar HaKedoshim, the Holocaust Martyrs Forest.

On the path leading to the new (2011) memorial to Anne Frank were signposts quoting her famous diary.

"The memorial is a sculpture created by designer Piet Cohen, and is the form of a room made of rusted steel. In the corner of the structure sits an uncomfortably high stool, from where the viewer can see an engraved image of the famed chestnut tree which Anne Frank wrote about so lovingly in her diary. The viewing experience is meant to recreate the feeling of imprisonment, isolation and discomfort while looking longingly through a window at the world outside." *

If you are ever in the Jerusalem Hills, look for this sign and follow it into the forest.
It is a moving experience.

* For  very interesting details about the Anne Frank Memorial Park and about the Martyrs Forest with  its six million trees, please see the Jewish National Fund/Keren Kayemet page
http://www.kkl-jnf.org/people-and-environment/kkl-jnf-projects-partners/dfu-2012/holocaust-martyrs-forest-anne-frank-memorial/
especially now, just a day after Yom Hashoah.
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Die goldene Medina

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Every spring when these Israeli trees shed their flowers, turning the sidewalk a bright yellow, I am reminded of the Yiddish expression Die goldene Medina.
The Jewish immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island probably did not expect to see America's streets literally  paved with gold  in "the golden country," but they knew that with hard work and patience they would rise out of poverty.

The trees responsible for my reverie look like this, with rough bark.
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(Linking to Camera-Critters meme, for the sweet black cat.)
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Cherry trees under netting

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While exploring the farms around Sonnenhof, I was fascinated by this huge "cage" of trees.

Rows and rows of cherry trees, all enclosed by netting.
There must be a hundred!

On one end, the "cage" was open and the upper netting was rolled back.

I imagine this saves the cherries from hungry birds and bats.
Leave it to the Swiss to cover the whole orderly orchard in such an orderly way.

Looking down from the monastic house Sonnenhof, you can grasp the size of the orchard.
Imagine the color and the fragrance when all those trees are blossoming in May!
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Never climb THIS tree

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Meitar has several of these spiky trees and they are the strangest trees in town.
Please enlarge the photo to see just how pointy those pointy things are. 

Look at those big "cotton" balls!

The other side still has mostly the green pods.
By August big yellow flowers will suddenly be here.
And here is a picture of the trees in late March, at the center of a roundabout.

Readers advised me that this is the silk floss tree (Ceiba speciosa), a.k.a. palo borracho, Spanish for "drunken stick."
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Mistletoe, fresh off the tree

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Since National Geographic published a nice article about mistletoe today on their News site, I figure it's time to blog about my mistletoe experience.
No, mine had nothing to do with kissing under the plant ... in fact I had no idea about these Christmas-time customs or even what mistletoe looked like.
The very last day that I was at the farm community in Austria last month, several of the men went off to the forest to cut some mistletoe off the trees.

Bruder Fritz, who founded the lay Franciscan commune in 1984, was kind enough to show me a cluster and explain about it.
Especially that the white berries are poisonous!

 

It is a parasite and  "it keeps that lively green color by stealing water and soil minerals from its host tree," as the National Geographic says. 

The article has nice photos of clusters in a tree and of various species and of birds eating the berries.  

And the surprising news is

There’s also evidence to suggest that some species of mistletoe can be used in treating cancer—something that people have actually used it for since the 1920s. Doctors today can prescribe mistletoe in Europe. And at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine, doctors are performing the first rigorous, I.V. study of mistletoe’s effects on cancer patients in the U.S.

 Here is a funny tidbit from the Oxford Dictionaries blog:

The custom [of Christmas kisses] seems to be restricted to England and the USA. I’ve asked friends from Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, and even from Scotland and Ireland. Bavarians bring mistletoe into their homes and put it in vases but none of my fellow Europeans came across kissing under the mistletoe as children. Their countries know of the custom now, but from Hollywood, and they think of it as an English or American eccentricity. 

UPDATE: Make sure to read readers' input in the comments.  All kinds of interesting things coming in from USA, Canada, and Europe!

UPDATE Dec. 24: 

BBC earth just published about mistletoe, including this interesting info about a good plant-animal symbiosis: 

Pairs of mistle thrushes will often set up a territory around individual trees and defend their stock of berries. But mistle thrushes are not actually very efficient at distributing mistletoe seeds. They eat the berries whole, defecating a sticky mix of pulp and seed half an hour later, when the birds are likely to have moved on.

Much more efficient are blackcaps. These little birds eat the skin and pulp of the berry, but discard the sticky seed first, wiping it off their beaks against the bark of the tree. This is perfect for the mistletoe, as the seed is placed firmly against the branch ready for germination.
Interestingly, in recent years we’ve seen many more blackcaps migrating to Britain over winter, and this could be beneficial for mistletoe.
There is evidence that mistletoe is increasing in some areas and some of this could be down to blackcap activity, although this is likely to be a combination of factors, including better protection of the ancient apple orchards that are the most important habitat for mistletoe.

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Tow this into the forest

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In Israel we carefully plant trees, one by one, and nurture them.
People around the world donate money to Keren Kayemet to plant trees in barren landscapes.
It is against the law to cut down a tree without special permission.

But here in Austria it is almost like a mitsvah, a good deed, to fell some trees.
I was told that the forests are simply taking over the land.

We saw this by the wayside while hiking from down from Hochart.

You just tow it into the woods and start sawing.
The logs fit neatly into the back part.

You see woodpiles everywhere here in rural Austria.
I'm a bit envious, especially when I read this report from the 1990s about Austria's forest harvesting:
"Forest land: 3.9 million ha (46% of the total area, 0.5 ha per capita). The forest area is steadily increasing by some 2,000 ha a year ..."
One hectare (ha) = 2.47 acres.    Sigh ...
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UPDATE:  Merisi of Vienna (do see her lovely blog!) gave us this good info in her comment:
"Woods and trees in Austria are well protected where necessary.
It is a fact that wood acreage is increasing here. Alpine landscapes are often cultural landscapes, created by farmers. Once they stop cultivating the meadows, those are quickly overgrown by bushes and later by trees developing into forests. Keeping this cultural heritage is one of the reasons farmers in high alpine zones receive subsidies."
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Tilting trees

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For ABC Wednesday, T is for tilting trees.
I found these pines leaning only when I came up over the north side of the hill.

On the top they were nice and straight.
You can click twice to enlarge the photos and enjoy the forest. 

On the south side of the ridge, the trees stood tall.
I love wandering in the forests and the desert near my home.
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A liman catches water and a reflection too

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Not often that I find a picture for James' Weekend Reflections meme.
And this is a transitory reflection, for as it gets warmer and Israel's rainy season nears its end, the water will vanish.

This is a liman, an earthen construction that collects floodwater by damming a gully or streambed. 
The dam slows the flow of the accumulated runoff water, causing it to permeate the soil and thus allow small groves of trees to flourish in areas with meager rainfall. 
Our Keren Kayemet/Jewish National Fund has been building hundreds of limans here in the Negev desert since the 1960s. 

The word is from the Greek λΐμήν, meaning “port.”
It appears in the Yoma tractate of the Jerusalem Talmud: “Until he reached the liman of Jaffa.”

Here it was 5:45 and the sun was down, time for me to start climbing the hill back up to my house in Meitar.

More photos and good information here:

Several articles on limans at this one link: https://www.kkl-jnf.org/organization-chief-scientist/water-for-israel/water-in-the-desert/limans/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liman_irrigation_system

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Cubby house in the eucalyptus grove

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In the last post we saw how someone had brought a bed out into the desert near Meitar.
Here we see how somebody made a cubby house under a tree in a secluded eucalyptus grove in town.

From a distance your might not even notice it's in there.
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A bed for Tu BiShvat

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Tonight/tomorrow is the Jewish holiday Tu BiShvat, the birthday of our trees.

I would like to make my bed among trees in a liman in the desert, with stars above, and jackal calls as a lullaby.
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Eucalyptus emergency

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Blackened earth and the acrid smell of ash!
What happened to our eucalyptus grove down in the wadi??
Our beloved nature place where the grandkids and I used to have adventures! 

I found this brush fire putter-outer lying on the ground and stood it up next to a eucalyptus that had lost its bark to the fire.
This is a common emergency tool in Israel, just a wooden stick and a piece of rubber, primitive but effective.
What's it called in English, anyway?

Only the tree and bush skeletons were left in part of the grove.
I wonder how the fire started.
Maybe from a falling rocket, but the local authorities didn't want to tell us?
"Keep calm" is the watchword these days, after all. 

OK, keep calm, Dina, and forget that this wadi is just two blocks from my house.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday E Day)
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Standing tall . . . 

. . . with our bases covered.
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(Linking to SkyWatch Friday.)
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Olive trees of over 900 years

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After seeing the Garden of Gethsemane from outside its Franciscan walls in the previous post, some readers wished to see the inside.

Olive tree trunks' rings are difficult to count.
So recently carbon dating was used to determine the age of these venerable trees in the garden where (tradition says) Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion.

Three of the trees were found to be from the years 1092, 1166, and 1198.
 The study was made by the National Research Council of Italy Trees and Timber Institute and by academics from five Italian universities.

See the pillar of stones supporting this leaning tree?
You can enlarge the photos to see better.
It was 7:45-8:00 in the evening when I was there.

The garden is next to the Church of Gethsemane, properly known as the Basilica of the Agony, popularly known as the Church of All Nations.

These olive trees are among the oldest known to science.
But to the pilgrims who pray there, a century more or less is not what moves them, sometimes to tears.
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Here is more about the recent study, and Wikipedia has more about Gethsemane.
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Straight to the point

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Since you all enjoyed the silk floss tree in yesterday's post, here's a bonus:

Grandson Eyal confronting the shpitsim, the pointy spikes, on the tree. 
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Still-bare trees and soon a dog park

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Every roundabout in Meitar has a different centerpiece.
This one has two silk floss trees with sharp spikes on the trunk.
If you enlarge the photo you can see what looks like big cotton balls hanging from the branches.
So far they are slow in getting their leaves back, but soon the trees will be like the silk floss tree I showed you in August, full of flowers.
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In back of the traffic circle is Gan HaZeitim, Olive Tree Park.
Inside it,  the local council is planning to build a dog park.
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Harvesting desert floodwater by savannization

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Meitar Forest is just a short walk north of my home in  Meitar.
See the parallel ridges in this late-afternoon photo?
Keren Kayemet (KKL)/Jewish National Fund (JNF), which is creating this and other forests in the northern Negev, explains it:

The tree planting method is called savannization, and it is based on harvesting desert floodwater.  

Terraces, furrows and ridges halt the rainwater and prevent it from running off. 

This method causes most of the water to be absorbed and stored in the earth, deep enough not to evaporate and close enough to the surface to be utilized by the vegetation.

Kakal (KKL) has some nice short videos about savannization on YouTube.
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Inside a tree!

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Happy Tu BiShvat!
The birthday or New Year of trees in Israel.
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For more about this happy Jewish holiday visit my previous posts.
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Why do partridges walk in a line?

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When I walk in nature places in Meitar I sometimes run into  groups of partridges.
(Enlarge the photo 2x to find the three fowl.)
Whenever I startled these funny birds in the Jerusalem Hills, they would always run and hide or run away fast and take to the air.
Here in friendly Meitar wild animals are laid back and calm, as if they know from experience that no one will hurt them.

The partridges in the top photo were in this grove of eucalyptus trees planted in the bottom of a wadi.
Often I take this shortcut from home to the supermarket (or now, to the grandkids!).
It's more fun than walking on the hot sidewalks. 
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See more about Israel's partridge at http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.co.il/2012/05/monastery-full-of-animals.html
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(Linking to Camera Critters.)
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