Sunday, March 13, 2011

Drought-Damaged Flowers

When my friends and I were at Tel Shiloh for Rosh Chodesh Adar 2 Women's Prayers, we noticed a new sort of flower.


It's a pink kalanit. We had never seen it in that color before.  But this isn't a good news flower, its unusual color is a defect caused by the hot dry weather at the wrong time.

I consider this almost albino kalanit as symbolic of the warm, sunny winter days mistakenly called "gorgeous."  During our Israeli winters, the truly gorgeous days are the rainy ones.  Strong sun and bright blue skies belong in the summer.  Israel basically has two seasons, dry and wet, summer and winter.  If we don't have enough rain we'll be in danger, not only of fire like the massive destructive one which devastated the Carmel a few months ago.

We must pray for rain, in its time, G-d willing.

4 comments:

Tzivia said...

Are you SURE its colour changed due to drought? I'm not saying it's not true... just never heard of it. It looks like a happy enough plant - if it didn't have enough water, wouldn't it just not bloom? Spontaneous changes are not unheard-of. Are others nearby also pink?

Batya said...

Jennifer, from what I understood it's caused by a combination of the "hot dry weather at the wrong time," as I blogged. The flowers need certain temperatures to thrive.

Hadassa said...

Shalom!
I've noticed purple anemones also. I looked for more information about the white variety and discovered that in Hebrew being a "white anemone" is like being a "black sheep". Twenty five colors of anemone have been classified in Israel. (I've always been a nature buff so Batya's pictures always send me off on a search.)
I saw a white anemone this morning on my way to the store, for the first time ever. It seemed to me that that even the flowers were sad today.

Batya said...

Purple I've seen, too. These were pink. I've never seen them there before, and I've been going to the tel every month for years.

The general colors are very strong and rich. The ones we saw were weak and sad.

Yes, the Land cried, too, today.