Tag: Israel

Cheering up with chickens

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Wherever we are, it seems like it’s only a matter of time until we find some chickens. It turns out we have a neighbor who has a whole yard full of poultry (we found him through the crowing of his roosters), including all my favorite chicken breeds such as Silkies, Brahmas, Polish, Wyandotte, Sussex… And it turns out we have some poultry aficionados as common acquaintance. So now hopefully, once I am able to nudge my husband (*smile*) in the direction of building a coop and giving the incubator a test run, we can get fresh eggs for hatching. Really, in moving here, there is nothing I miss like my chickens. For the time being, we go to visit and feed our neighbor’s birds whenever we can.

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Speaking of going somewhere… There hasn’t been much of that lately because the rains have been SO intense for the season. We even missed our regular afternoon in the library today! I’m surprised at the strength of my craving for sunshine, warmth and all that comes with it – hammocks, picnics, wading pools, bare feet, and working in the garden.

In the meantime, we have been trying to make the best of these days of being cooped up inside (as you can judge by Shira’s modeling clay art), drawing, reading, and taking out all our favorite board games. We have actually finished the fifth Harry Potter book, which has been our ongoing read for months.

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I have also been putting the closets in order and discovered another stash of yarn scraps that will be just perfect for a doll-making project. Once, of course, I put Pesach (and all the cleaning it entails) behind me.

I hope spring is on its way to all my friends in the northern hemisphere!

When winter refuses to give up

Last night, we were awake multiple times due to one of the most epic thunderstorms I have witnessed this year. In the morning, we got up to a quiet, moisture-filled world, with water dropping down from the tree branches and puddles everywhere.

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There’s even a little stream of sorts that flows after heavy rains, and guess who loves to put on his rubber boots and wade through it?

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The spring flowers, however, won’t take no for an answer. They know it’s their time to bloom.

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I, too, am gearing up for warm weather projects and making a little dress for Hadassah. I hope to finish it soon and post the tutorial as well.

Have a wonderful early spring, everyone!

Spring flowers

Have I mentioned that I’m not a winter person? I’m sure I have, a time or twenty. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re all thinking – that we have no real winter here. However, short days, lack of sunshine, and rain make me want to crawl under a blanket and sleep until it’s spring again.

So you can imagine how happy I am when it’s sunny and warm and all my favorite flowers are out.

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Beautiful white cyclamens – we need to decide where to plant them so that they can bloom again next year.

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More cyclamens, of a smaller, wild variety. They smell delightful.

Forget-me-nots.

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Pink geranium, growing by the day and quite happy in its new home.

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Look at that big stalk growing out of our aloe plant. You can also see a tomato bush or two in the background. And yes, the weeds are winning the race against us, because they, unlike us, didn’t mind being out in the rain these past few days!

I’m wishing happy spring to you all. My mind already transports me to the season beyond Pesach cleaning, to the joys of long afternoons, iced lemonade, hammocks and crickets.

Between the drops

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We’ve had so much rain here lately that I’m seriously considering to go into hibernation mode until it’s all over. I know, I know. It’s unfair to complain about a bit of rain and mud when the country needs water so badly, and when my friends in the northern states and Canada are snowed in, but I do love sunshine with a passion and absolutely need lots of it to feel happy.

In the meantime, we are going on with our indoor diversions of baking, reading and crafts. In the photo above, you can see the cute little throw-on vest I had just completed (the loose ends still need to be tucked in!). It’s made from alpaca wool blend and was a joy to work on. I imagine it would also work great with pure alpaca yarn, such as this lovely yarn from LoveCrochet.

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On a rare sunshiny afternoon, we went for a walk to take some photos of these beauties – almond trees in bloom, the typical local herald of spring.

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And this last one is my favorite – this old stump looked quite dead until new green shoot began to pop up all over it. Now it’s teeming with life. So hopeful!

I hope you are all staying safe and warm and successfully battling cabin fever. Soon enough, it will be time for working in the garden, gathering wild edibles and, perhaps my most dreaded feature of the season, spring cleaning.

Spring delights

I thought I’d post a couple of photos of the nice things we’ve been enjoying lately – plenty of sunshine, green grass for our birds to browse on, and flowers.

As you can see, our baby peafowl have grown quite a bit, but as peafowl generally don’t breed until two years of age (to the best of my knowledge), we don’t expect any egg-laying or breeding this season, though the male is becoming more colorful with each day.

The plant in the bottom right corner is actually a wild herb that sprang up in my garden quite unexpectedly. It smells wonderful, but I have no idea what it is. A guess, anyone?

In the upper right you can see a gorgeous desert view from a day trip we took. It lacks the lush greenery that can be seen in other parts of the country at this season, but I still find it majestically beautiful.

An update and a book review

First off, I would like to thank all the amazing people who left me comments and private messages following my last post. We are slowly coming to terms with the tragedy, and I was finally able to sleep a whole night. Above all, I’m praying for strength for my poor friend and her children, and for wisdom for our government, who must finally wake up and understand that the only way to increase its citizens’ safety is by harsh measures and an unapologetic stance, rather than by finessing and beating around the bush and PC talk.

In the sleepless nights that have been my share this past week, I’ve been reading John Seymour’s The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. There’s nothing to take one’s mind off things like reading about malting or raising goats. Though much of the information in there will never be relevant for us (such as anything that has to do with raising pigs and rabbits), I’m loving the book; it’s the ultimate, most well-rounded and practical DIY guide to all things a homesteader, on whatever scale, might need, from tilling land to baking bread, from building fences to raising and managing livestock, and everything in between. Sure, it branches off into chapters that have enough fodder for specialized books on their own, and the savvy reader can find manuals that focus on, say, just animals (such as, for instance, my The Basic Guide to Backyard Livestock, and other, more detailed works) but it’s the best introductory condensed guide to self-sustainability I’ve read so far.

It could have been us. Or you.

Last night, a friend and neighbor of ours was brutally murdered by a cruel and cowardly terrorist, and while I can’t either think, speak or write about anything else this morning, I hardly know how to begin talking about this either.

It all began very trivially for us last evening. We were on our way home from my Mom’s, and I was irritated with my husband for stopping by to make some unnecessary little purchases, rather than drive straight home, while I was tired and (as usually these days, being in the third trimester) in need of a bathroom.

In retrospect, these few minutes of delay were just what prevented us from being on the spot while the terrorist was driving by. A little earlier, and the news could be reporting of several victims, not one.

So, as we were approaching home, I saw several private vehicles lined up, and a military jeep close by, with soldiers questioning someone. “Another patrol,” I sighed, thinking in frustration of this extra delay. That is, until I saw the ambulance. And a car with the front window all shattered with what looked like bullet marks aimed at the driver.

My heart sank. I knew that car.

Still, I was frantically praying, “please not them, not this family”, while in the utter chaos that reigned on the scene, we were checked, cleared, and told to drive on very carefully. A couple of hours later, we had already heard the heart-shattering news – that today, we are to attend the funeral of a friend with whom we stopped to chat only yesterday, thinking little it would be our last conversation.

The roles could have been reversed. It could have been us. It could have been anyone driving by in a car with an Israeli license plate.

I hardly know how to conclude this post, except perhaps with this: every day, Muslim terrorists prey upon roads in the West Bank, looking to shoot, stone, burn or run over unarmed Jewish civilians who seem to be the easiest prey. Every day, They know that, once caught, they have nothing more to fear than a stay in prison in the conditions of a passable hotel, where their “human rights” will be ensured by the hawk’s eye of humanitarian organizations, where they can pursue academic degrees at leisure, and from where, finally, they can hope to get out by some political-propaganda-fueled “gesture of goodwill” on part of our idiotic government. As long as they are in prison, their families receive generous pensions funded by sleekly run, well-funded Muslim and European organizations. Once they are out, they are celebrated as heroes, and can go back to their career of murdering innocents.

There is no death sentence, for anyone, ever (since Adolf Eichmann, at least), even if they were caught red-handed in the act and laughed and boasted in the face of the court. I say this needs to change. I hope it will change, so that Jewish blood can no longer be shed with impunity.

If you will, please pray for the widow and six children, aged from 11 to 8 months, who were left bereft by the horrors of last night.