Getting ready to go

It was time to start thinking about leaving Israel--so that also meant it was time to start thinking about finishing up this experiment, which I guess is the primary reason I came over here




The first step was to get the biomass of all my plants measured. Although I had assumed correctly that it would be easier to get the density of my plants (i.e., count them all) as I clipped them for biomass weights, it still didn't make it easy.

Essentially what this job involved, was going through and clipping the plants stem by stem (with manicure scissors, and tweezers. If you've heard at all about my experiments, you'll know what common experimental implements these are for me). So I had to count the stems for each species, and then seperate them into bags....especially hard because these plants were so dry (they matured nearly instantly!) that when you touched them, the seeds would spring off....making the grasses that much harder to identify.

It was once I'd gotten all those big grasses out, and got down to a situation like this, that I started wishing for a tub full of grass again....sifted through a lot of leaves with tweezers, identifying small brown bits of plant.





Finally the job was finished though, all the plants clipped, and stress levels were dropping. All the plants were clipped, bagged and drying....We were finished with time to spare !




But knowing me, what does time to spare mean? Find something else to do! So, I decided to measure the below ground biomass as well...



Because the tubs all contain about 70 L of sand, and I didn't have all that much time to spare, I only collected the roots from a quarter of each tub (I was quite impressed with our ability to get only 1/4 of the sand out....took some skill I had to say.

So, the 20 L of sand from each tub (all 120 of them) was washed through a small screen and I collected all the roots. As you can see, it was pretty classy work.


But in the end, everything got finished, all the sand that I hauled in last year got hauled back out, tubs were cleaned, and the greenhouse left empty. My work here, and I guess my time for play here as well, is done...

Haifa for the weekend

I went to Haifa for the weekend, for one last trip to the north of Israel, before I headed back to the north of Canada. After spending very little of my last trip to Haifa last year actually in the city, we had vowed to spend more time seeing the sites inside the city.

So, we began this by going hiking.....outside the city.

We did see pretty cool things there though. We saw groups of caterpillars all following each other in a line...



They call this the "caterpillar train"



And also got to go hiking in some really nice areas, with vegetation cover and water--both of which you don't find so much hiking in the desert.



We made it back to the city for an evening tour of the city. We overlooked the harbour from just above the Bahai gardens (golden domed building in the centre).



The next morning we headed, you guessed it, back out of the city. This time we went to Tzipori, the ruins of a settlement over 2000 years old. It is thought to be a centre for Jewish learning after the temple was destroyed early in the first century . Some of the best preserved mosaics in Israel are found here.



Including the Mona Lisa of Galilee (it is actually referred to as this)...



You can see from the surroundings why they would pick this spot to build a settlement. It is higher up than all the surrounding lands, so you get a great panoramic view of the region.



We finally arrived back in the city, to spend the afternoon wandering around the old Arab section of Haifa.


We ended up finding a set of footprints painted on the sidewalks, and so, of course, decided to follow them. We couldnt' really figure out where we were going, or what the footprints were all about, but kept following them anyways. They eventually led us to the workshop of a man who fixes old wooden furniture. He explained to us that there had been an art walk through Haifa a few months before, and that the footprints were taking us past all kinds of art exhibitions (we had commented that there seemed to be a lot of artists living in this area, with all the art outside). So, we started over and followed through the footprints again, looking for the art this time. We had decided we thought they were all supposed to follow a coffee theme, but this one threw us off that track....

The Alpaca Farm

There's an Alpaca farm in Mitzpe Ramon in the south of Israel. I didn't really know what an alpaca was before I went, but I've been told since it's like a Llama but from certain mountainous areas of South America.

The story goes that the owner of the farm was in South America and fell in love with the Alpacas, and decided it would be his life goal to import them into Israel. It sounds like the government made him all kinds of trouble getting them in, but when you've got a goal (as weird as that goal is) you've got to stick with it, and he eventually got them in.



I'm not sure actually how happy they are hear. I think they're pretty versatile animals, but I couldn't imagine myself spending a summer in the temperatures in the Negev, and I'm not a really hairy animal from South America (regardless of what you've heard).




After going to the farm, we drove out to the Makhtesh as it was a clear day and we wanted to see the view. A Makhtesh is a wind blown crater, and the Makhtesh Ramon (the one near Mitzpe Ramon) is the largest in Israel (even bigger than the Makhtesh Gadol, which translates as "big crater". I don't really understand their naming schemes.)
There's a big serpentine road that goes down the edge of this to the highway that goes over to Eilat, which apparently is one of the reasons you don't want to do your driving test in Mitzpe.



A panorama of about 1/2 of the Makhtesh. It really is amazing!

In the North yet once again

I took another trip to the north--I got kind of a whirlwind tour last time, but I wanted to go with friends to do some exploring. This time we pretty much stuck to the coastal areas, and headed inland a bit in the upper Galilee

We started by driving up to Akko. I've had lots of people tell me that it's their favourite city in Israel. It's definitely got character--it's probably 1/2 Arab and 1/2 Jewish, is sitting right on the coast so there's a big fish market in the old city and a big marina so there's lots of visitors.



Here's a view from the coast....



We headed up along the coast stopping every so often to explore and look for animals. There were lots of people fishing from the shore nearly everywhere we stopped.



These were amazing, and I'd love to know how they form (although I suppose not enough to look the information up myself...but if someone wants to fill me in that would be great). They were essentially naturally formed very flat platforms that we saw just inside the water on the rocky parts of the coast.
I could have stood and watched the water flow over them all day.


This beach seemed to have been taken over by a group of relegious girls. Israeli's are big on getting out on trips and exploring their country. I think it's great, and impressive that so many people are out exploring, but also means that you need to deal with large groups of Israeli's if you travel on a weekend, essentially everywhere you go.

These girls had taken over not only this beach, but also the nearby campground where we were planning on staying. They had shut it down completely so the relegious girls could stay there and not be worried (about what I'm not sure).



We did manage to find a great place to camp, and had an amazing beach to sit and watch the sun set.


We also found these snails along the beach. The dye in the shells is the original dye that was used for the tassels at the edge of the tallit (the prayer shawl that the Jewish men wear. I eventually had to learn the name (and I hope I got it right) after enough people got frustrated with me calling them "those hanging-down things). I've heard that the snail is starting to go extinct because even though they can use artificial dyes now, so many of these snails were collected for the dyes, and are still being collected now.



The first "border" we saw on the trip. When I took this picture we were in "AkhzivLand" looking back into Israel. The campground beside the one we stayed in is run by .....well essentially what we described as a crazy man. He was renting the land from the Israel Land Authourity years ago, and decided to declare it an independant country called AkhzivLand. He gave up his Israeli citizenship and fought with the government for years over it. It seems as though they've just given up as he's not causing so much harm. Apparently you can even go in and get a stamp in your passport if you want (we somehow managed to sneak through bordercontrol I'm guessing though).



In the morning we headed right up the coast to Rosh HaNigra, the town on the border with Lebanon. There are some great views back along the coast...



And again more fishermen on the beaches.


This is probably as close to Lebanon now as I'll get for a while (I know I said this earlier, but I didn't anticipate going right next to the border. Who knows, maybe I'll end up there in the fall? ) I took this photo, although I knew you weren't supposed to take photos of borders, right before I saw the "Military Area. No photos" sign. Ah well, too late.



Then we headed inland to go find some caves where just the front archway of the cave is left, as the roofs have all collapsed in. For me, I think the hike up to the caves was probably even nicer than the caves themselves. We did some botanizing....



and generally just enjoyed the scenery.


The caves themselves are pretty nice, and we found after we got there that you could drive nearly right up to them (there were many more people up there than we'd seen on the 1 hour long hike), but I think they were really missing out.



I find the danger signs here to be quite explicit. If you don't understand any of the the 3 languages, the bottom left picture would be pretty hard to confuse.



Finally, a lemon tree. Maybe not all that exciting for anyone else, but I was very excited. I think when I moved to Israel it was the first time I'd ever seen a citrus tree, and this was the first time I'd seen a lemon tree. I remember driving with friends here and being blown away by the grapefruit trees (it's a huge fruit for a small tree), but the lemon tree just seemed kind of imaginary. I know I'm a botanist (plus a grown-up) but it's still kind of exciting to see these fruits do actually grow on trees :)

Purim and the Adeloyoda

This weekend was the Purim Parade. Some of you may remember my description of Purim from last year

To summarize though, Purim is a holiday that celebrates the day that Esther saved the Jews in Persia. Esther was a Jewish Queen (although her husband, the King, didn't know that she was Jewish). The king had an advisor, Hamman, who, after one of the Jews (Mordechai, also Esthers Uncle) refused to bow to him one day, advised the king to have all the Jews executed. This plan was to be carried out on the day that is now Purim, but Mordechai and Esther come up with a plan that saves the Jews and Hamman ends up being executed instead. (this is really poor on the details/accuracy, so if you are interested there is a link in last years post).

The holiday is a really happy holiday. There's a actually a rule that you must be happy on Purim. For the kids it has turned into something similar to Halloween, with costumes. Many of the girls dress as Queen Esther...


But there's lots of other costumes as well (although I'm not sure what this kid was dressed as...)


For the adults, there is generally some sort of costume party, and there is a rule that you are supposed to drink as well (it's one of the only times that the relegious can also drink). It says that you are to drink until you can't tell the difference between the phrases blessed Mordacai and cursed Haman.

In Sede Boqer (and in many other cities) there is an Adeloyada (translated as "until one doesn't know" from the above phrase) which is a Purim carnival. Sede Boqer's is put on by the highschool students, and is a parade which they usually put a lot of effort into. Each one of the years in the highschool has a theme that they build the floats for.


This year the themes were:

The wild wild west

Mid bar is the name of the new student pub in Sede Boqer, and also the Hebrew word for desert



I loved these costumes the students came up with : they're tumbleweed (essentially standing inside large dried out bushes collected from the desert).


Another theme was flight...




Although I don't really understand what this has to do with flight....



The third theme is Africa...


You can see a lot of effort went into the floats.


And the fourth was kings, complete with Elvis (and groupies)

Back in the South

Essentially the day after getting back from the north, I headed back out, this time to the Arava desert in South-Eastern Israel. It was my friend Efrat's birthday and a group of her friends all went to go sleep in the desert and go hiking.

There was a bit more water on the hike than we expected (probably left over from the flooding 10 days ago)



But after hiking through the water filled Canyon we came out on a beautiful landscape...



Here's the group of us finishing up the hike.