Tu B'Shvat

We recently celebrated the holiday of Tu B'Shvat--the New Year of the Trees ("Chag Ha'Ilanot" or, as Ilana says, "my holiday" :)).  We ate a ridiculously large variety of dried fruits and I even serendipitously discovered a budding tree while walking home from ulpan.

view from our porch in September....

and view today.  A little rain does a lot of good!  The giant pile of dirt is the start of a new apartment complex.  

 It's a small holiday, hence the small blog post :).  But it is nice to feel like we've made it through the majority of winter (or, should I say, "winter"?!).  There was mass pandemonium the other day due to the *possibility* of several centimeters of snow in Jerusalem!  Some schools were closed, there were rumors that the main highway to/from Jerusalem was closed or would be closing imminently (Chana had come home for the afternoon and we were hoping she might get snowed in, but no such luck), and I had a question for a secretary at Hadassah Hospital, but she hadn't come to work because of the (no) "snow"!  We're prepared, though--my genius husband brought our snow shovel just in case!