My friend who lives in the Galil took me on the peak trail of Mount Meron in the northern part of Israel last week. I was thrilled to be greeted with these red anemones aka poppy anemone, known in Hebrew as kalanit (singular poppy). I thought they bloomed earlier, but she explained that Meron is up high, so the poppies bloom in May. What a treat! There were plenty of flora of Mount Meron in bloom.

Here is a sign for the peak trail on Mount Meron. We parked toward the top of the mountain, then we hiked around the mountain. The views on Mount Meron are breathtaking. There was a bit of a haze, which my friend said is unusual. The skies are typically quite clear in late May.

I am guessing that these beautiful yellow flowers with insects on them are nurit (singular) in Hebrew – maybe ranunculus asiaticus in Latin. The English name might be asiatic buttercup. I used this database to help identify the wildflowers: A guess for this yellow flower: yellow pea or yellow vetch. See Here’s how those yellow flowers were growing, in a great yellow bunch.

He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet.... He was turned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky. The “due-process clause” has come to mean that state as well as federal power is subject to the Bill of Rights, and it has been used to protect corpora.

Thistles of various types are common in Israel; I suppose they do well in dry, hot climates. A brown and white butterfly landed on this thistle.

This aster-like flower with light blue petals I’m guessing is a chicory flower. See: I will finish up with another view from Mount Meron. Mount Meron is known for the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai.

We visited the tomb site and surrounding village – that is a topic for another post. Story And Clark Piano Serial Number Database. For more Nature Notes: Filed in:,. Today I chaperoned seven girls (one was my daughter) at the Salute to Israel Day Parade. The girls danced down Fifth Avenue wearing yellow RPRY t-shirts, white with black detailed bandanas and flowers on their wrists.

I thought they did great despite the nasty heat. We gave them water when they looked flush, but I was concerned for some of them with the humidity and heat. Above is the RPRY banner, which I photographed while we waited to move unto Fifth Avenue. I took these with our Canon Power Shot, as being a chaperone I needed a lightweight camera that I could put in my fanny pack.

This was another RPRY banner – the school typically has one large one in the front and a smaller one in the back. If you want to see past posts of the parade, here is • • • •. RPRY was right in front of Kushner (a school in Livingston, New Jersey), so I got a good shot of their banner. Some of the graduates of RPRY go to high school at Kushner, so we knew some of those students. Many schools and organizations march in the parade. Above are Bruriah high school marchers.

This girls’ high school is called Mayanot. It is in Teaneck, New Jersey, not far from TABC where my middle son goes to school (and my eldest is an alum). My daughter may go to high school at Mayanot, but she is only in fifth grade, so we have plenty of time to decide.

Here is the TABC banner. Somewhere in the group of marchers from TABC is my middle son. I do not know which school is pictured above, but I do like their colorful, varied banner.

I suppose someone or another will write in the comments the name of the school. People who march in the Israel Day Parade, in my experience, love to see themselves online!

This was yet another group that marched in this year’s Salute to Israel Parade. I was only able to photograph a small fraction of the marchers.

Lots of politicians march, but they march early. When I used to march as a scout leader with the Cub Scouts I would get to see politicians. Yeshiva University had a very large contingent of marchers and a float as well. My husband and my father (z”l) are alumni of Yeshiva University. Many colleges and universities marched toward the end of the parade. Pictured is a banner for Rutgers Hillel. My eldest son marched in this group with some of his University of Maryland friends.

And for those of you who want to see more pictures from Israel, I do plan to post more! I started gathering flora pictures from Mount Meron, but I got stuck on trying to identify the flowers (and I needed to take off for the parade). Hope to get those up soon.

Flowers in a pot in Beit Shemesh, Israel – taken from balcony of an apartmentI just came back from a one week trip in Israel. After discussing various options for connecting on social media and keeping up with my email, I decided to bring my iPad mini on my trip. This post will examine where it worked and where it did not. In the comments, feel free to offer your own travel advice. Connecting with the iPad in Israel Originally, we were supposed to stay with my cousins most of the time. However, due to circumstances beyond their control, we stayed with a relative by marriage (who was an absolutely wonderful hostess). She had great wifi in her apartment, so when we came back after our busy days we were able to both re-connect and re-charge our iPads (I was traveling with my eldest son, and we both have iPads).

The three prong adapter seemed to do the charging better than the two prong, so I would suggest buying a three prong adapter if you are traveling from the U.S. I bought the adapter easily on Amazon. If you stay in a hotel, I would assume most of them will have great wifi available to guests. Verify before booking your place. Train station in Petach Tikva Israel-Railways: I loved traveling on trains in Israel. The wifi is free, although I discovered it is not very strong, and you may not have any if you sit in the “wrong” part of the train (is the corner not a good spot?

I would need the locals to help with this). Even when I did get decent wifi on the train, it was not strong enough to upload a photo.

So save your photo sharing for the strong wifi locations. Tel-Aviv Art Museum: Yay, Tel Aviv! The art museum had its own wifi, so we were will able to look up the museum website for more information while viewing. The Israel Museum did not have this feature. I might write a post comparing the two museums in general. Both were wonderful.

In general, the Tel Aviv municipality has approved a budget for free wifi in the city, in parks, main streets and commercial centers (coming soon in 2013?). The Galil seems to have less options for free wifi than the central part of the country. This is not surprising, as the Galil is more rural.

You can sit on the Ben Yehudah mall in Jerusalem and depending where you sit, it is not hard to find free wifi. The Jerusalem bus station had enough wifi for me to load one Google map of Jerusalem unto my iPad, then it went away or asked for a password.

One friend I visited had computers but no wifi. I Googled connecting my iPad via her networked computer, but it didn’t seem so simple to do. One techie friend said I would probably have needed to add iTunes to her computer. I certainly didn’t have the right administrative privileges to do so, but the truth is, with guest privileges I could check email and Facebook, so what more did I need? Ben-Gurion airport had free wifi while we waited to board (leaving Israel). Free Download Thermomix Asian Cookbook Pdf Programs. When we got off the plane (arriving), we had none, but my cousin came right away so there really was no time, anyway. Setting up your iPad for your trip In some ways, my iPad was prepared properly.

In other ways, I would have done things differently. I downloaded a few games that required no wifi for the plane ride. I got fairly good at Bejeweled Blitz on the plane – I don’t have the patience to read books on planes. I only got through a few pages of Jane Austen’s Emma (which I had downloaded for free in advance via Free Books app).

A big mistake I made in preparing my iPad for the trip was that I set up my email to work, but I only checked incoming mail and not outgoing. I couldn’t get the setup for outgoing mail in Israel for my regular mail, so I depended on my Gmail account.

If you regularly use Gmail, just download the Gmail app in advance. I prefer to do work correspondence with my leoraw account; for future travel, I will make sure I have outgoing mail set up properly as well. Facebook and Twitter on the iPad are easy: just download the apps in advance and make sure they work properly. I found it nice to take a few photos with iPad as I traveled. Then, when I had the chance, I shared one on Facebook and one on Google+. Most of my photos I took with my Canon Rebel. But I wasn’t planning to utilize those photos until after my trip was over – the ones on my Canon I will probably edit a bit before sharing.

On turning mail accounts on and off: I share the iPad with my daughter. I added my email accounts to the iPad a while back, checked them, and then turned them off. For the trip, I turned off her email account.

Now that I am back, I should turn her email account back on and turn off my email accounts. I actually bought a pocketbook for the trip in which my iPad mini fit exactly. So it was simple to carry it around – it even came with me on the hike on Mount Meron in the Galil. I have great photos of flora and of views from that hike. The famous red poppies were in bloom for me. Planning the next trip Although it may be a while before I go on my next international adventure, I am still thinking ahead to how I might plan differently next time.

By the time I next travel, I suspect I will have a different smart phone. I will probably want to get some sort of SIM card for the smart phone so I can connect almost anywhere instead of searching for wifi. But the truth is, not being connected everywhere is not so terrible. It’s OK to just enjoy nature without needing to look on Facebook.

If I don’t use my smartphone in Israel, I would spend more time getting a better Israeli phone for rental. The ones we rented I would not recommend. What is your travel advice? I am sure some of you have traveled more than I have. What have you found useful for connecting online? What questions would you advise to a traveler anticipating a trip? Highland Park Street Fair 2013 – umbrellas in the rain Despite the rain, people wandered down Raritan Avenue last Sunday exploring the booths, talking to vendors and meeting friends.

Maybe I’ll use this as inspiration for a watercolor – I love the colorful umbrellas. On My Blog Elsewhere in the Blogosphere • Learn about Paneer, an Indian dairy dish, on. • Lorri reviews – looks promising! A bit of fantasy crossed with historical fiction mixed with mixed cultures. • Thank you to Batya for once again hosting the. • Heidi Estrin hosted the. As an experiment, I wrote this post before I left for Israel, left it as a draft in my WordPress backend, and published it via my iPad mini while visiting Israel.

Hope to publish some posts with Israel pics soon. Filed in:, Tagged. I did a sketch/drawing last Sunday of the boy talking to the fisherman. You can see the first sketch and learn a little about the background of the subject matter: a. I keep thinking I should perhaps go back to oils to get more control, especially since I am working on human beings.

But oils take a lot of preparation time just to get started painting. Maybe I will try ink and some watercolor.

Or some other combination. Meanwhile, thank you for reading/looking/commenting. If you like, you can take a stab at this question: What the fisherman is thinking? Boy and man fishing by the Raritan River, drawing in colored pencils 2013 by Leora Wenger It’s been a while since I posted a bit of art.

I took a photo of a boy talking to a man fishing by the edge of the Raritan River. I decided it would make a nice subject for a painting, so I did this sketch with colored pencils. It has a similar feel to the watercolor I did last summer of two men (presumably, they had been fishing at the Raritan River before relaxing). When you look at the boy and man, what do you imagine is the relationship between the two? I’ll let you in on the setting: it was taken at the community Lag B’omer event (the 33rd day of the Omer, a day of celebration in the Jewish calendar) in Donaldson Park. I’m assuming the boy was there because of Lag B’omer, and the man just happened to be fishing nearby. I also started working on an “urbanscape” – a painting of “downtown” Highland Park, basically a piece of Raritan Avenue.

I’m not terribly happy with the composition, so I may put it aside or work on one piece. I have three busy weeks ahead, so I will have little time to do art for a while.

Happy Mother’s Day to those who celebrate. Happy Shavuot to those who celebrate. Enjoy a beautiful spring day, if you are lucky enough as we are in New Jersey to have a gorgeous one outside. Filed in:,, Posts navigation.