It's interesting trying to keep up with this blog, I am trying to keep it true to the experience for my own selfish reading and to make for good stories in twilight years but at the same time keep it entertaining for you back home and wholesome enough for the professional and public reading from the shadows. As such I retract my earlier statement offering stories of Brazilian liquor and beautiful women haha, I am being a regular choirboy, it was a good hook though I thought.

I have actually just gotten off a skype call with some of my Solomon Islander students who have made it to Australia and tell me four graduates are currently in the lucky country. Pretty cool really, puts things into perspective and great to be able to be in contact with them from the other side of the world. Makes me wonder what contact will come in the future from the crew over here. There's a strange thing about long term travel, it gives you a chance to get right into the cultures beyond the experience of a tourist which is invaluable but I guess it makes it all the harder when it's time to go home.

Anyway enough of that introspective garble. There is so much happening over here I can't keep up with doing it and writing a good spiel about it too but I will try to do a quick rant to get back up to speed. Firstly, I better mention a few horticultural projects before people start thinking this is just a big holiday. A few trips of late have included: this week touring Zakai tissue culture lab and learning all about callus culture and maintaining a strict percentage of stock cultured from field material rather than duplicated from cultured material so as to avoid increased risk of mutations occurring in future generations. Now that's a bit wordy but basically what it means is that it reduces the risk of abnormal quirks developing from mass cultured stock, for example thousands of bananas had been cultured for plantations and while not immediately apparent, developed the mutation of not producing fruit… it's a risky and expensive industry hazard, when the result may not be seen for five years or more.

We have also been conducting biological surveys of Cyclamen persicum and other geophytes in JNF forest in plots that have had various canopy cover removed, clear fell, 30% canopy, 70% canopy etc. The results have been quite interesting, illustrating larger plants with more blooms in cleared forest but less plants in general, which I guess makes sense with less competition the plants in cleared areas finding niche microclimates thrive without competition.

Further back I got to visit the LivinGreen rooftop farm on the Dizenguff centre in Tel Aviv and hear of their successes and failures with rooftop growing, including lettuces being completely blown out of hydroponic systems in the rooftop winds and showering people below (probably not but the image is pretty funny). Not sure if I am repeating that on here, I have told the story once or twice. Actually a really great project and hats off to the guys.

From here it is into the desert this week to visit the Negev Desert Research Centre where they are developing and trialing salt tolerant crops and aquaponics but more on that later.

Catching up on things outside of horticulture is going to be hard, this is an amazing experience… The Jerusalem Festival of Light came and went attracting thousands upon thousands of visitors to the Old City display. The Israel festival is on, so there are bands playing Jimmy Hendrix and Johnny cash to name a couple, on a nightly basis. There was a Japanese show at the gardens the other day and this week animatronic dinosaurs are descending on the landscape (photos to come).

There's more but I might finish here I think, that's enough to bore your socks off and the last few highlights, Ceasaria and Hoff Habonim need more of a write up than a quick sentence, so until next time. Lehitra'ot