Canada Park Forest Day with impressions by Pearl from Montreal -

 WE ARE ACTIVE CAARITES!  

Due to rainy weather the previous weeks, CAARI had to "reschedule" several forest days and today is one of them. Susan and Neil do such a great job shuffling and arranging!  Earlier in the week, the took our orders for the picnic lunch - bagel sandwiches of all kinds.  They arrive early in the morning, pick up the sandwiches, shop at the grocery store around the corner for chips, oranges, water and today we were treated to Hamentachen!  

Packed bus with food and participants and off we went.  Of course, a bathroom stop before we begin work.  We met up with the JNF Foresters to explain about the forest and give us our work assignments.  In a few weeks, the country will be celebrating Purim and JNF had to get the park ready for the visitors.  The parks are OPEN to ALL!  Our job today was to shellac the picnic tables and stands for barbecuing - an Israeli favorite , pruning back trees branches, to prevent fires.    Some of also picked up litter, but not as much as in past years - big improvement.  So not to 'dirty' our forest clothes, we were given painting white suits  - now that was a laugh watching CAARI put these on over their clothes!  By noon we were done.  WE impressed the JNF workers with out enthusiasm, energy, talents and responsibility to offer a 'helping' hand.

By Pearl - "Off we went  to the Ayalon Canada Park which was established soon after the state was born. The money raised went to buy the land. We had a lovely morning painting picnic tables, removing excess growth around tree trunks, and picking up trash. Israelis are still smokers and we found many cigarette butts on the ground. Nuts,when you consider how many forest fires there have been. This area was the home of the Maccabees, near the ancient city of Modiin.."

 'Amazing day' says Fern, 'how are you going to top this? Enjoy the pictures - we enjoyed the day as after lunch we went to the Natural History Museum!'