Kalaniyot…

I took a rare day off this week, left my husband with our kids (and our daughter was sick 😦 ) and went with my dad to the Negev to look at the anemones (kalaniyot in Hebrew) bloom.

Anemones

It was breathtaking, especially with the still naked winter trees in the background.

More Anemones

Anemones in Israel have a rich history. For starters, they have a limited season (early spring). When they bloom, they practically make a red carpet. When the Great singer Shoshana Damari sang the song Kalaniyot (Words: Natan Alterman, music: Moshe Vilensky) in 1948, she burst into public fame and created one of the best known and best loved songs in Israeli music history. This also caused many people to pick anemones and bring them home or sell them, causing a sharp drop in their number.

This brought what is still considered one of the most successful publicity campaigns in the history of Israel: The campaign to stop the picking of wildflowers in 1956. Spearheaded by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel  using wide education campaigns and laws, it stopped the picking of wildflowers almost completely. Within a short time the wildflowers carpeted Israel again. Proof of the success of the campaign remains still today, as generation of Israelis have taught their children not to pick wildflowers. Therefore, you can see the carpets of wildflowers blooming in the spring.

Even more anemones

Unfortunately, there is still garbage and plastic bags, but at least the flowers don’t get picked 😕

Not anemones (mostly). Got you there!

 

Happy blooming!

 

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Chameleon Flowers!

Last post I photographed the beautiful flowers my husband bought me for my birthday. Well, something odd is happening to them: they are loosing their color into the water. From white flowers with blue streaks I have know white flowers in blue water. I assume that to get the blue streaks to begin with they were probably put in colored water.

Apparently, flamingos work the same way – they are pink becsue of the shrimp they eat. In zoos, they don’t eat shrimp (what zoo could afford it? 🙂 ) so they turn white. Zoos don’t like having white flamingos, so they either feed them red beetroot, add carotene to their diet, or in the case of the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, colour their water pink (or maybe the water in the Biblical Zoo is pink for the same reason the water in my vase is blue? What came first? I need to find someone at the zoo and find out). So we get flamingos of colour ranging from pale pink to dark pink.

Purple flowers with flourescent green streaks, anyone?

White flowers and blue water

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