Here are a few pictures I've taken of my temporary "Green" replacements. When one doesn't have maples, one does what one can! Enjoy!!
Palm Trees fascinate me. I think it's because we don't have a lot of them in Minnesota (ha). Well there is the cool neon ones by the small, unique plant store on Highway 108 (a couple miles past the Park headin' towards Perham for those of you in OTC).
Anyway, in absence of fall here, I've started photographing palm trees to keep myself from missing the change of colors here.
I really don't know much about Palm trees. During Easter time, I never really thought about the fact that some SUnday school superintendent probably worked very hard to secure palm leaves for the Entrance Hymn on Palm SUnday! And, in later years, whenever I see them I think Vacation and Beach and the Jimmy Buffet song "Wasted Away (again) in Marguarittaville". So, to improve myself, I went to my friend, and yours, GOOGLE.
Here's one small thing I learned:
Human use of palms is as old or older than human civilization itself, starting with the cultivation of the
Date Palm by
Mesopotamians and other Middle Eastern peoples 5000 years or more ago.
[15] Date wood, pits for storing dates, and other remains of the Date Palm have been found in Mesopotamian sites.
[16] The Date Palm had a tremendous effect on the history of the Middle East. W.H. Barreveld wrote:
"One could go as far as to say that, had the date palm not existed, the expansion of the human race into the hot and barren parts of the "old" world would have been much more restricted. The date palm not only provided a concentrated energy food, which could be easily stored and carried along on long journeys across the deserts, it also created a more amenable habitat for the people to live in by providing shade and protection from the desert winds (Fig. 1). In addition, the date palm also yielded a variety of products for use in agricultural production and for domestic utensils, and practically all parts of the palm had a useful purpose."
[15]An indication of the importance of Palms is that they are mentioned more than 30 times in the
Bible[17], and at least 22 times in the
Quran.
[18]Arecaceae has great economic importance including coconut products, oils, dates, ivory nuts, carnauba wax, rattan cane, and raffia.
WELL, I certainly didn't know all that!! I will never just think about Marguerittas again!
Here the palm trees are pretty much everywhere. I've seen palm trees by the gulf, palm trees decorated with neon lights, palm trees cut off at the top so that only the brown trunk shows and my personal favorite, a palm tree bent in half (and it was still growing!)
When we were in Belize last year, we learned that palm trees can bend all the way to the ground and not snap. We saw many examples there of trees actually out of the ground with the roots exposed and still growing.
In making an analogy (which I like to do--thanks MDMC for teaching me that!)
I used to say that we have to be flexible and Bend like the Willow
I think I'll start saying that one needs to be flexible like the palm tree and keep growing even if you're bent in half!
Here's one last thing we should think about when praising palm trees:
Hhmmm, bet you didn't know that! Class dismissed...
This is a picture I took in the Mosque. I thought of all my Somali Muslim students as I looked around here. This is their Holy Book-the Qu'ran. The calligraphy is beautiful.
Newbie HH and I posted in our "Cover Up you Heathen Christian" outfits. The "manager" of the Mosque had just yelled at me for not having my entire head covered up. We were laying on the floor taking a picture of the dome of the mosque (hey the tour guide told us to do so!) As you can see, the outfits aren't all that flattering. NO I really haven't gained that much weight (remember-no beer here!)
This lady made me smile. She wore her baseball hat the whole time she was in the mosque. She didn't speak English so I had to "sneak" a picture of her. It made me smile.
