Oh, it may feel like an ordinary winter Monday, but for our people it’s the 15th day in the month of Shevat, the New Year For Trees.

Chabad.org describes the celebration of Tu B’Shevat as the beginning of “the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.” More pragmatically, it’s the point in the fiscal year where fruits are taxed or tithed to the next harvest.

As is the case of all Jewish holidays, Tu B’Shevat is marked by eating specific foods (or in the case of Yom Kippur, specifically not eating food). The seven honored fruits of the day are wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates, which make one tasty, powerful salad when mixed up with some lettuce and feta cheese.

Sure, it’s a minor enough holiday that Jewish newspapers aren’t giving the day off and nobody’s wished me any tree love on the way to the bathroom. But still: The bounty that trees lay out for our hungry bodies should surely be honored.

Go get yourself a pomegrante and a nice container of olives from the deli to nosh outside on your lunch hour. Be grateful.

And oh! Remember the miracle of the 2,000 year-old date palm seed that was germinated in Israel last year? (No? Read up.) “Methuseleh” is now 14 inches tall and though its gender (i.e. whether it will bear fruit, not whether it’s a feminist) is still a mystery.