On these late winter mornings, surveying each new day I feel like I am living in paradise. The weather is so temperate, the landscape lush and forthcoming, the wheat fields exude vitality. Back west, my family and friends are hunkered down in the cold and snow as I gratefully soak up the winter sun. The … Read More »
Rest and Refuel
Ron came home the other day, full and contented after an excellent meal at one of our favorite gas-station restaurants – Nimmer, near Golani Junction. You may be raising an eyebrow, like I did when I first moved to Israel, about the prospect of eating in proximity of gas pumps. But as it turns out, … Read More »
Wild to Cultivated to Wild
What a great pleasure it is to have a hakura, or kitchen garden, next to the house – particularly when its yields peak in mid-winter. Yesterday I stripped the hakura of just about all of the swiss chard to make a crispy filo-layered pie. Washing and trimming the fleshy leaves, I realized how viscerally I … Read More »
What You Can Count On and What You Can’t
Let’s start with what you can’t. Here in the Galilee, you can’t count on the rain. You know, or at least you hope, that after what feels like an interminable, hot dry summer, eventually, the seasonal rains will make their dramatic appearance. And usually, by mid-October or early November, they comply. This year, our faith … Read More »
No Rain, No Luf
It is dry here. So dry. By this time of year, we could have expected several serious bouts of rain, and at least a stirring of growth in the brown earth. Instead we get the vaguest of clouds and downpours of thirty seconds that barely darken the sidewalk. On a walk last weekend in the … Read More »