WILD TULIPS ON MOUNT HERMON

The delicate beautiful Mount Hermon tulips are a feast for the eye. Growing high up on the slopes of Mount Hermon, where spring is late and just started, they sprinkle the barren ground pink with specks of yellow.

There is still snow in the hollows.

Photos by my husband Uri Eshkar.

BAGS AND POUCHES IN TEL AVIV

My bags and pouches now also sell at the Lady J boutique at the Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv.

I HAVE A MOUSE IN MY HOUSE

NEW MESSENGER BAGS with old Bedouin embroidery

I don't know why these used Bedouin dresses end up at the flea market in Yafo. I always wonder...

I go there and bargain and buy them. I am happy. I take them home, wash them thoroughly, and take them apart.

While doing so, I think about those women. I imagine them stitching, sitting in the sand maybe? 

The days are hot in the desert and the nights are cold. What is the woman thinking? Does she stitch her love and hopes into her embroidery? How does she choose her colors? And the pattern?  Is she working for herself? For her daughters to get married? 

I try to honor their labor. I treat the embroidery pieces I cut from the best preserved parts of the dresses with love. I transform them into another item of beauty.

 I make bags and adorn them with the colorful cross stitch embroidery of the Bedouin women of the Sinai and the Negev desert in the land of Israel.

ANCIENT RUINS - Park Shoham

Here in Israel you can not throw a stone without touching some ancient ruin, a holy site or an archaeological dig. Many places are excavated thoroughly with signs of explanations, and  flyers with photos and words, telling the story. You pay an entrance fee, there are restrooms and a kiosk, a visitor center, all very comfortable, and you have hours of wonderful strolling through the past and you wonder, and learn, and are excited.

But then, you go out, just on a nature trip, and you stumble on remnants of long gone by times, with a small sign post, or no sign at all. A mosaic floor of a synagogue or church, broken columns, water wells and cisterns, an olive press, fallen walls of rooms, entrance gates, relics of the past, of the Israelite from biblical times, of Romans and Crusaders, Byzantines and Ottomans, and so on.

Yesterday we went to see some of the last spring flowers, and we came upon remnants of a Byzantine church with gorgeous mosaic floors, all open under the sky and the already hot sun. What a treasure! 

 

There is a medallion with Greek writing.

The ruins of the nearby dwellings are much older. 

A water well. 

Olives were pressed here to get the precious oil.

It is May already and the green of the spring fades away to the beige and brown hues and shades of summer.

But some flowers still color the landscape.

Photos by Uri Eshkar.