Tu B'shevat. Arbor Day

A light fog turns the landscape into a wet eeriness, and the bryophytes (plants that get water from the air) swell up lushfully in the unseasonable warmth and humidity.  It will warm up to the low 70's today.  It is hard to believe that it is mid-January!

And the clock keeps ticking.  Linda will bring me some buttered toast and a coffee refill in ten minutes, and after that, I'll begin showering/shaving/gargling and such so I won't be so offensive at services this morning.

But for the moment I have a hushed moment with you.  I haven't stopped following your blogs, I have just been in a long dry spell where everything just sort of lost its taste.  I didn't garden, I didn't write, I didn't get dressed, I didn't plan.  Feels good to be back, though I see my thoughts are still disjointed and flat.

Soon, though, that last rush as we haul out the contributions to the pot-luck that follows the morning services, and the stuff the collection of papers for the congregational website into a manila folder, we'll be off for the morning.  Later tonight, the congregation is having a Tu b'shavat get together as well.

Tu B’Shevat is first referred to in the late Second Temple period (515 BCE to 20 CE) when it was the cut-off date for levying the tithe on the produce of fruit trees. When Jewish colonists returned to Palestine during the 1930s, they reclaimed the barren land by planting trees where they could. It became customary to plant a tree for every newborn child – a cedar for a boy and a cypress or pine for a girl.

I will plant a tree tomorrow to keep the tradition going.  Probably where it blocks the view of the new intruder, the trailer house.

Good morning!