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\"Every spring the little girl who lives next door to Rosario helps him plant vegetables. One spring, Rosario plants a fig tree, which soon bears sweet purple fruit. But when fall comes, he bends it over and buries it in the ground.\"--Publisher.

If not for Anne Frank’s diary, the chestnut tree that stood behind 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam would have lived and died unnoticed during the almost 180 years of its life. But once news spread that this tree was ailing, it acquired a life of its own—moreover, a life that seems destined to continue in perpetuity. Alive or dead, the Anne Frank Tree, as it has come to be known, has become the most protean of metaphors. Many people have found meaning and solace in the tree in ways they never seem to have found in the diary, although the

This is how the narrator of The Founders describes the forest: \"It was an ancient forest of oaks, carobs, and birches, with glades of lush, green grass -- perfect for grazing sheep and cattle\" (8); \"[it was] a forest of sturdy, upright oaks, spreading their thick, leafy boughs, and stretching away without numbers on all sides. Old, red carob trees abounded, laden with fruit, and on the floor of the forest grew bracken and bushes of all sorts, so profusely that they often barred their paths\" (22). [Hermoni] is moved by the unexpected lushness of the site where he plans to settle down and build a farm. For an Eastern European pioneer like him, the sight of a forest is a moving reminder of the landscape he left behind even if it is different in its growth and its scope.(23) Although [Eliezer Smolly]'s description of an indigenous forest is grounded in the historical reality of the Sheikh Abreik region, it is possible that the description of the lushness of the forest is also influenced by his own vivid images of the Eastern European forests of his childhood.(24) Yet the antiquity and the lushness of the forest described in The Founders inevitably introduces tension within the vision of settlement. Given that the Zionist mission was commonly conceived as \"making the desert bloom,\" what is Smolly's vision of settlement within the context of an old forest? The resolution of this tension is articulated by Hermoni: \"This is the kind of life we'll make for ourselves... We'll turn these barren valleys into gardens of Eden. They'll be covered with corn and barley, oats and hay, and we'll plant vineyards and orchards on the hillsides in place of these thorns and thistles\" (20). At another point he tells his family: \"If the soil in these hills is good enough to grow such fine forest trees, it will be good for fruit trees too. We'll plant figs and vines here in the winter, and turn these barren hills into a Garden of Eden\" (H17, modified translation). Despite his excitement over the lushness of the forest, Hermoni redefines the terrain within the framework of his vision as \"barren valleys\" [amakim shomemim] and \"barren hills\" [geva'ot kerhot]. It thus appears that the conceptual opposition between wilderness and settlement reshapes the natural landscape according to these socially constructed categories. As a symbolic landscape, the forest is now defined not only as wilderness but also as a desert. This view is later affirmed by other Jewish settlers who visit the Hermoni family.(25) (5). This popular image of the country's forested landscape during antiquity obviously supports Zionist collective memory and ideology, but may not be as well-grounded in historical evidence. Similarly, the claim that all modern afforestation efforts are the product of Zionist activity ignores other factors, such as the afforestation policy of the British Mandatory authorities. See Yehuda Felix, \"Al ha'Etz ve'haYa'ar be'Nofa haKadum shel ha'Aretz\" [On the Tree and on the Ancient Landscape of the Country], Teva va'Aretz 8 (1966): 71-74; Nurit Kliot, \"Idiologia ve'Yi'ur be'Yisrael: Ya'ar Ma'ase Adam be'Emtsa'ut haKeren haKayemet le'Yisrael\" [Ideology and Afforestation in Israel: Man-Made Forests of the JNF], Mehkarim be'Ge'ographia shel Eretz Yisrael [Studies in the Geography of Israel], a festschrift for Professor Dov Nir (The Society for the Exploration of Eretz Israel and its Antiquities, 1992), 88, 91; and Nili Lifshitz and Gideon Bigar, \"Mediniyut haYi'ur shel haMimshal haBriti be'Eretz Yisrael\" Ofakim be'Ge'ografia [Horizons in Geography], no. 40-41 (1994): 5-16.

White trumpets, he called them, and when they fell, clogging the gutters, he imagined it as the annual wedding celebration for the earth and sky. Guided by Leki, a field ecology teacher at nearby Waters Elementary School, the neighbors have turned their few blocks of riverbank from a vine-tangled dump for drinkers and dope smokers into a haven to stroll and watch the ducks.