Among my many fond memories of living in New England is seeing the snowdrops push their way up through the dirt, wet leaves, and slush in February. They were the first harbinger of spring, and I planted them deliberately to have something blooming before the crocuses came up in March.
My garden in Israel has been a disappointment thus far. Most of the plants in it are spindly or diseased, and the soil (of the worst possible quality) is packed so hard that it took hours of hacking away last year for the girls and me to put in a few bulbs. (I have requested that the Cap’n start a fund toward which we put the money for a total overhaul of the garden in another year or two.) Last spring we had a couple of crocuses, a few narcissus, and two hyacinths. This year only one hyacinth has appeared in the great confusion of warm weather before winter’s final exit. (The other hyacinth and most of the crocuses appear to have been dug up in the course of the local feral felines using my garden as a public loo.) Beans came in breathless this afternoon having taken a turn about the garden and spotted the Lone Survivor:
Ahhh, a spot of beauty in a garden of mediocrity.
Shimshonit 
Do you do composting? Klara Levine, who lives in the Jerusalem area, is very into composting. You can just plant whatever you want in the compost. She probably has friends who are good at gardening in Israeli conditions.
Nice to see the beauty of spring.
Composting is a great suggestion for healthy soil, and one I will look into when the the garden is redone. My concern is that it will attract varmints even more than our garden does now. (I hear some of the neighbors spray wolf piss in their yards to keep the cats out. Wonder if it works.)
The man who took out a sick tree in our yard said that gardens like ours, built on a hillside and surrounded by bricked street, are basically giant plant pots and unfortunately, the soil laid down for the gardens is usually very poor. We will have the trees and shrubs pulled up and the soil dug out and replaced before planting anything new.
I think if you only compost fruits, vegetables, and other plants, you should be ok. The cats will take care of any potential rats, and the cats themselves won’t enjoy anything you put inside the compost.
Also, if you are concerned, you can get a “closed” compost, like one of these: http://www.newgarden.org/images/compost_bin.jpg
There won’t be any smell, the cats won’t be able to get into it, and so on. We did once get a rat in the compost bin, but he ate himself so fat he got stuck there and never got out. But out of the 20 years or so we’ve been composting, that’s the only rodent-incident we’ve had so far.
It’s worth starting a compost early enough, because it takes a while before it starts to turn into soil.
Ann-Mi: Thanks for the recommendations. I love the look of the enclosed compost bin and wonder if I can find anything like that here in Israel. I’ll look into it. We do have varmints other than cats and rats here (I saw a weasel-like creature called a beech marten last year; wouldn’t want to attract any more of those).