Fireworks on July 7, 2013 in Donaldson Park, Highland Park, New Jersey
Blog Awards Received
I want to acknowledge two blog awards received from two excellent bloggers. First, I was pleased to receive the Liebster Blog Award from the talented writer Jeri Walker-Bickett:
I am going to cheat a little and pass on the rules as they are posted on the Liebster Award (instead of doing both) to a few favorite bloggers.
About the Liebster Blog Award
Blogging can be a very solitary life, and sometimes encouragement is needed. The Liebster Blog Award is just that, a token of encouragement from a fellow blogger. A world without rules can lead to chaos, and the blogging world is no exception. In accepting this award, a blogger will follow the following rules. It is a way to “Pay It Forward” to other bloggers.
Answers to Jeri’s questions:
Who is your favorite author? My favorite author choice varies, but I will go with Aharon Appelfeld.
What is the strangest book you’ve ever read and liked?Maus by Art Spiegelman
Favorite social media site? You can circle me (Leora Wenger) on Google+.
Which blog do you read most often? I am afraid to answer this question for fear of offending anyone, but the three blogs that show up in my Frequent folder are: RamblingWoods, Jewaicious and Hannah’s Nook.
What would your last meal be? A depressing question: the last meal I was able to serve my father was chicken soup. So I’ll ask for chicken soup.
What is your biggest pet peeve? vague questions like this one
Where did your best vacation you ever take place? In 2008 we (my husband, my three children and I) visited Kfar Blum in northern Israel.
Who do you consider the greatest TV character? Archie Bunker
What one thing would you most like to change about yourself? self-doubt
If you have been nominated below for The Liebster Award and you choose to accept it, write a blog post about the Liebster award in which you:
Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link on your blog.
Display the award on your blog by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a widget.
Answer the 11 questions about yourself, provided to you by the person who nominated you.
Give 11 random facts about yourself. (Note: I skipped this; long enough already!)
Nominate 5 to 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award; who have less than 1000 followers.
Create a new list of questions for the nominated bloggers to answer.
List these rules in your post. (You can copy and paste them from here.)
Once you have written your post and published it, you then have to inform the bloggers whom you’ve nominated for the Liebster award. Remember to give a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)
Reciprocation by the nominees is entirely optional.
11 questions for those who accept Liebster Blog Award from me
Who is your favorite author?
What is your favorite blog topic?
Favorite social media site?
Topic of your most popular blog post ever?
Where did your best vacation take place?
What is your strongest childhood memory?
What is your favorite online recipe?
Which topics do you talk about in person but avoid discussing online?
What is your favorite film/movie?
What is your favorite fairy tale?
Name a historical leader that influenced you.
And here are my nominations for the Liebster Blog Award:
(Some of those listed below have commented on my blog for years – a huge thank you for that).
I started this watercolor Highland Park Traffic several months ago when we first started our artist group. After a month or two of getting frustrated with the details, I put it aside. I finally decided to finish it yesterday and ignore the details that weren’t clear. So if it looks like the cars are swimming in a river of purple watercolor paint, so be it.
The scene is Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey. And often it does look there is a sea of cars swimming on the avenue. Our little borough’s downtown has an old-fashioned look. There are also numerous senior citizens that live in the town. When I took a photo several months ago, I unknowingly captured an older woman with a cane. She reminded me a bit of my father, who walked with a cane in the last months of his life.
I am trying to decide whether to continue with watercolor or delve back into the more time-consuming oil painting. With oils, it is easier to rework parts of the painting. With watercolor, other than careful lifting, it is quite difficult to make changes once one has laid down the heavier colors. And unless you use gouache, there is no white paint, so it is important to leave the whitest whites blank paper.
Question for you: what pops out at you in this painting?
Not far from the home of my friend in Maalot Israel is a little forest. One can see flowers such as the blue globe thistle, Echinops adenocaulos – קיפודן מצוי.
Ma’alot is a city built on hill. My friend’s home has lovely views from her back deck and from the nearby forest. You can see there are lots of trees in the valleys and neighboring hills and villages on the far hills.
I have no idea what species is this big bird on a wire (a crow?). But he was bigger than the pigeons, sparrows or doves that I saw. All the birds I saw on my Israel trip were brown, gray or black – none were brightly colorful. I did look up a few birds from the Hula Valley and found some colorful ones shown.
In addition to featuring this buttercup on this Ma’alot Israel Flowers post, I saw buttercups on Mount Meron (Ranunculaceae, נורית).
I believe these large white bouquet-like flowers are Queen Anne’s Lace.
From the deck of my friend’s house, I could see sparrows, mourning doves and pigeons. I saw what may have been swallows flying above, but I wasn’t quite sure. Do you see the little sparrow in the large palm tree? I told my friend her back deck would be a lovely spot for birdwatching, and she offered for me to stay a few months to make my observations. Maybe one day I will take her up on her offer.
Here is a mourning dove hanging out on some sort of gadget. I don’t see these often in New Jersey, but I have seen them a fair amount in Israel. On my trip to Israel five years ago, I believe I incorrectly identified this bird as a pigeon (it’s a mourning dove). I’ve learned a bit about birds since then – I hope to have the opportunity to learn more.
My daughter is taking an art class in fashion. So she was excited when I volunteered to share some of her drawings in a post:
A few questions came up regarding the class. It seems that her art teacher used words to which she was unaccustomed to talk about the human body (the main word in question is b-*-*-b-s). It sounds like her teacher even pointed to that part of the human body while using this language. To give a little background, my daughter and her friends attend a modern Orthodox Jewish day school. So they are unaccustomed to hearing such language in the classroom. One friend felt it was OK to talk that way; another said it would be OK for a science teacher to talk about those parts of the body. I pointed out that sometimes the science teacher talks about the science or anatomy but doesn’t bring up the feelings that the words might elicit.
In addition, my daughter told me she was careful to draw dresses that are what is called tznuah – modest. My daughter wears short-sleeved shirts, as I do, but not sleeveless. We also wear skirts that reach close to our knees. In school, she has to wear quarter-sleeves or longer and skirts below the knee or longer. She sometimes wears pants, but she is not allowed to do so in school. As opposed to feeling trapped by these rules, as some girls do, I think they make her feel safe. The one drawing on this post that is sleeveless she explained to me is a bathing suit. In her most recent dance school she was required to wear a dress that had hardly any top at all, so it made her feel naked. She was very unhappy about that outfit.
A Discussion on Fashion and Modesty
With the view that people have different cultural norms, and certainly anyone reading this post may have a different viewpoint, upbringing and outlook from my daughter, myself, her art teacher or her science teacher, I have a few questions for you.
Have you ever given much thought to how you dress?
Would you be comfortable with the use of the word b-*-*-b-s in the classroom?
Feel free to discuss in the comments anything I have mentioned. The point is to understand someone else’s point of view.
Tell Us Your Favorite Fashion Design
On a lighter note, you could comment on your favorite outfit on this post.
When I was in Beit Shemesh, Israel, I saw some beautiful trees with purple blooms. I saw them again in Naharia, a northern beach town in the Galil. The jacaranda blooms above are in Naharia. Then I visited Ma’alot, and I was pleasantly surprised by yet more jacaranda blooms.
According to this Flowers in Israel post, jacaranda trees are originally from South America. Looks like the Hebrew name is סיגלון.
Derivation of the botanical name: Jacaranda, a Brazilian vernacular name. acutifolia, with pointed leaves. mimosifolia, with leaves like genus Mimosa.
The Blue Jacaranda has been cultivated in almost every part of the world where there is no risk of frost; established trees can however tolerate brief spells of temperatures down to around −7°C (20°F). In the USA, 30 miles east of Los Angeles where winter temps can dip to 10 degrees F (-12 C) for short several-hour periods, the mature tree survives with little or no visible damage.
This jacaranda tree (above and below) was photographed in Ma’alot, Israel. Ma’alot is about twenty minutes inland from Nahariya, Israel.
The name may be Blue Jacaranda, but I think those blooms are purple. How about you? Do you think this is some botanist’s desire to see blue in nature?
I’m linking to Laura’s Five Grain Three Seed Gluten-Free Sesame Sticks in the hopes that someday I will make them. My sons said, when I mentioned breadsticks, oh, I’ll eat those. Even if these aren’t really “bread.”
Jeri wrote a touching, maybe even heartbreaking poem on Jon’s blog called Grandpa Red.
I’ve wanted to grow echinacea flowers in my yard for a while. This season I’ve got a large one growing in my front yard. Years ago, I grew some in the back, but that area has become too shady. Supposedly, they reseed easily, so I shouldn’t deadhead too much. We shall see.
I couldn’t decide which photo to post, so here are two echinacea photos.
Today is a fast day on the Jewish calendar: Shiva Assur B’Tammuz (the 17th Day of the Month of Tammuz). I have been planning to post some nature notes of jacandra tree blooms and other nature in the Galil, but that will wait until next week. Above is a photo I took when I was in Jerusalem last month. The photo (near the main bus station) shows an example of the mix of architecture in Jerusalem, although if you really want to see the old, old of Jerusalem, visit my post on the City of David. Other posts on Jerusalem: Jerusalem Day and Jerusalem in Ruins.
What happened on the 17th of Tammuz? According to this Chabad article, there were five tragic events on this day, but I will mention this one:
The walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans, in 69 CE, after a lengthy siege. (Three weeks later, after the Jews put up a valiant struggle, the Romans destroyed the second Holy Temple on the 9th of Av.)
I’m going to re-post my watercolor from 2011 – you can learn more about its significance on the post Fox in Ruins.
This is no ordinary cactus – it is a sabra plant. We continued our journey up beyond the village of Meron and into an area above that had caves, rocks and flowers. I photographed this large green cactus, and my friend informed me that it is a sabra. Native born Israelis are referred to as sabras, because like the plant, they are supposed to be prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside.
Prickly pears typically grow with flat, rounded cladodes (also called platyclades) that are armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth, fixed spines and small, hairlike prickles called glochids, that easily penetrate skin and detach from the plant. Many types of prickly pears grow into dense, tangled structures.
The Hebrew word for the cactus fig is tsabar, “similar to and derived from the Arabic ‘صبار ṣubbār’.” It is reportedly also used as fencing. Have you ever eaten a sabra fruit?
As this lovely little kalanit plant was growing near the sabra, I’m sharing it as well in this post. To see more of those red poppy anemones, visit my post on my hike on the Peak Trail of Mount Meron.
I enjoy beets. Beets can make food a bright, natural pinkish red. I once used beet juice to color icing on a birthday cake – it was beautiful, and no one except my daughter and I knew how we got that lovely shade of pink. Here are two delicious ways to prepare beets, and then I threw in a bonus “beet soda” to cool you off on a hot summer day. Hope you enjoy these beet recipes.
Lemon Beet Salad
An easy classic way to prepare beets.
Ingredients:
3 beets
1 lemon
salt and pepper to taste
first cold pressed olive oil
fresh parsley for garnish
Cover the beets in a saucepan with water, and cook until the beets are tender (use a fork to test). It usually takes about an hour to cook the beets. Remove the beets from the beet juice (you can use the beet juice to make beet soda as described in the bottom recipe). Peel the skin off the beets. Chop into bite-sized slices. Sprinkle with sea salt, olive oil, pepper and a fresh lemon juice. Garnish with parsley, cilantro, basil or whatever fresh green herb you have available. Tastes nice at room temperature.
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Fermented Sliced Beets
You have to make these a week in advance, but then you have tasty pickled beets to serve for several meals.
Ingredients:
3 beets
1 Tbsp. sea salt
water to cover
Wash beets carefully. While still raw (no cooking in this recipe), chop in half or quarters and then into thin slices. Put the beets in a glass jar. Add a tablespoon of sea salt. Cover with water. To weigh down the beets and make sure the brine covers them, I use a baby food jar. Cover the glass jar with a cloth and a rubber band. In a few days, it will begin to ferment (you will see small bubbles on top). You can taste the beets as you go along. In about a week, store them in the refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.
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Beet Soda
Save the beet juice from either of the above recipes. Add seltzer, maybe a twist of lemon or lime, maybe a cube of ice, and enjoy!
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Do you cook with beets? What are your favorite beet recipes?
