02/01/2013

Second day into the new year. Weather is miserable - grey, cold and humid but not one drop of rain. A storm is forecast for the weekend.

Though school is not yet started, many students have come to use the library which remains open during the holiday period. There are students who spend the holidays studying and writing up their thesis ... hard to believe but true.

My harvest of lemons

I spent the morning harvesting lemons from our tree in the garden. It's an old tree but it still yields 2 boxes full of lemons. I had to use a ladder to pick the lemons higher up the tree but it was tricky as the tree was not pruned last year, so long straggly branches got in the way. And the south side of the tree is especially tricky because it grows out over a 2 storey drop below. I gave the tree a very good pruning.

So the new year is hardly in and we got bad news - the govt. is getting harsh with foreigners ... this time those living in Palestine.  http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/state-bars-westerners-living-in-west-bank-from-entering-israel-east-jerusalem.premium-1.491318  They cannot enter Israel. And a get-tough-with-arabs security procedure backfires in Brussels when a jewish Israeli soldier with an arab sounding name gets the full treatment; he calls it discrimination. http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/idf-soldier-with-arab-sounding-name-accuses-el-al-of-discrimination.premium-1.491309