Stigmata feast

Passionfruit vine

It's Election Day today ... and the City is very quiet in the morning. Everyone sleeping in on this national holiday. Later in the day the traffic jams started .... everyone was out to enjoy the sunny cool weather outdoors. News online says there's a low turnout in voting. That's bad because it means the extremist racist parties stand a better chance of winning. These groups vow to remove all non-jews from Jerusalem and advocate physical attacks on non-jews especially on arabs and christians. It's scary. Now later in the day newspapers report voter participation to be slightly higher. Still it's anybody's guess who will lead in the polls.

1st passionfruit

Autumn has begun and like I said previously .... most fruit are in the harvest stage. Our recently planted Passionfruit also started producing fruit ... I found 2 in the mass of vines. That's a good sign. I had taken a lot of care and now it's rewarding with some fruit. The huge vine climbs a 15 foot wall with 2 jasmine vines ... they support each other as I have no trellis for them to climb.

Today is also the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. That's when the crucifix with 6 seraphic wings appeared to Francis and imprinted the 5 wounds on his body. I didn't celebrate with the community because I had to go to Bethlehem and celebrate Mass for the MC sisters there. It's quite a distance and I was afraid the checkpoints would be closed due to the Elections and arab buses cannot travel in and out of the town. Lucky everything was open and I could go and come home safely.