Tu B'Shvat (ט״ו בשבט)

 

Happy Birthday/New Year to the Trees!

My mum and I celebrated Tu B'Shvat, which is the Jewish holiday where trees are celebrated for providing us with food. We talked about the things we wanted to grow this year in our little backyard garden and about the things that we can do to lessen our impact on the Earth.

To celebrate we meditated, coloured leaf mandalas (I really like how my mum's turned out; theirs is great!), read the book Trees Make Perfect Pets, and we had a Tu B'Shvat seder where we ate grapes, almond, pecans, walnuts, dates, oranges, apples with honey, olives, fig bars, and little yoghurt wheat cakes. Additionally, since we could not plant a tree ourselves, we adopted a tree online and donated money to a local urban farm that grow fruit trees.

Here are some links if you would like to learn more about Tu B'Shvat:
Tu BiShvat on Wikipedia
Tu B'Shvat at Cultural and Secular Jewish Organization
6 Activities for Tu Bishvat with Kids at 18Doors

[1/5 The cover of a book called "Trees Make Perfect Pets" that features a child pulling a potted tree in a wagon. 2/5 Misha's (my mum) mandala colouring sheet. 3/5 my mandala colouring sheet. 4/5 an infographic with information about Tu B'Shvat. 5/5 my Tu B'Shvat morning bento tray with many foods from the seder.]