This Week in Hungary...

Wow, it is very hot outside to-day already and it's only 9am on Monday. House all closed up, but even so, it has gone to 25Cinside...

Too late shutting the door and windows this morning...was outside, beating the heat, making a big brick seat out of all the left over bits and pieces of bricks and filling the brick outline/frame with rubble as we have nowhere else to put all the newly created rubble now!

Will end up with 2 big brick seats now...hahaha...
 

The guys have gone to get the big ladder to take off the temporary roof on the cottage and make a temporary lean-to for Andrea's little car at the end of the tool shed...and you can bet it will rain as soon as the roof comes off...(12hrs later, it's raining!)

Then Imre will finish the bathroom walls in the cottage and I'll take the left over old beams, not used on the lean to roof and add them to the back of the big deck for some extra height to the retaining wall.

A lovely neighbour gave me a dozen hibiscus plants from 6inches high to about 2 ft high last week...I planted them straight away but I think the heat has knocked them around a bit...we'll see.

I was thinking hibiscus would make a nice screen at the back of the big deck...3 hrs later, Margit turns up with a dozen Hibiscus plants for me! Amazing.

Roof off the cottage, roof half finished on the lean-to for the car by lunch time...
Beams up for the wooden panels we'll use, that were on the cottage for a year..

They used my clothes line posts for the corner poles of the lean-to. When in Hungary, do as the Hungarians do!

So the guys have gone off for lunch and I'm back inside in the lovely cool...in comparison to outside to-day. Will make up a big cook pot of tomatoes, bring to the boil, mash a bit with the potato masher, leaving some whole and bottle them when cool, then freeze them for winter to make nice tomato whatevers throughout winter.

Just wash the little tomatoes and pop them into a big boiler with no water or anything else. Easy as.

Yesterday I made some apple and blackberry spreads...and some crab apple puree/sauce. I collected the crab apples and blackberries from my jogging track roadsides and used some of the trillions of my apples, falling everywhere now.
2 neighbours have already taken a barrow each of fallen apples home to make palinka and you'd never know...and I also made an apple pie with rice and oat flour for the pastry...

Need more practice with pastry from rice and oat flour!

A huge apple year this year. My freezer is full now of stewed plums, apples, tomatoes, apple and blackberry spreads, crab-apple puree, with a few spaces for the elderberry syrup, spread and juice I'm making now, as I write this.

Some of the girls in the family at Xmas 2016...

The much awaited new camera still has not turned up...but am taking pics on the phone.

I'm going to see another guy re seeing if he can get the pics from my phone to a memory stick instead of the computer...which won't upload them now after I fell on the computer in Munich and ended up being taken by ambulance to hospital for a few hours.

All good with my ears I think, they have been good for about 10 days straight now...but am not going to Scotland next week for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo... Not game enough to risk all that travel yet. I have a big trip coming up later in the year and need my balance to be better by then.

Make hay-bale art! Sponge Bob and the Snail...

Just this minute heard from one of my workaway volunteers...He's arriving tomorrow afternoon, so that will be great to have some help with the heavy lifting on the big deck brick seats I'm making.

He's only staying a week, but that will be enough time to get a few inventive jobs done and out of the way.
Cleaning up around the place leads to all sorts of inventions.

Found this pic of the 3 door shed on the left with the dunny in the big collapsed part of another big shed before we pulled it down!

All the left over pieces of plastic pipes can be made into wine racks, tool shed containers, if cut to size, or garden pots. I'm going to stand them on end and push/bang them into the ground, fill with soil and plant flowers,(or veg) in them...then paint them different colours!

3 door shed now renovated and in this pic it is almost a new tool shed!

Left over bricks and broken concrete pieces make great retaining walls and seating, old plastic drums, made fabulous seats that I use every day. I keep 2 of the stools inside and use for foot stools or ladders to close top windows or climb up onto the table or bench tops. 

One of the best ideas I ever made!

My 3 Hungarian friends in OZ, at my sister's home.

It was so funny today...I picked 3 big containers of tomatoes...takes an hour or more, fighting my way through the rogue bushes in search of the tom thumb tomatoes, as they hide easily under every leaf!
Anyways, I bagged them up and gave to 2 neighbours, along with a giant zucchini I grew...and as soon as I arrived back, another lovely neighbour, who borrows the cement mixer at times, brought me in more tomatoes and a zucchini! LOL...

Too funny for words!

The rain is cooling things down now, so will fly off and catch everyone next week.
Take care,
Cheers,
Mary







.

Back on The Blogging Track Again!

Hi All...long time between drinks this year, but hopefully all is set to get my weekly blogs out on time once more.

A very long and interesting few months of challenges for sure, a time in which I was introduced to someone I was hoping to catch up with one day.

I know I talk in riddles sometimes but please endure and you will understand.

My old camera was playing up, the battery cover kept popping open and the battery would drop out, then it would not close properly, then one day, it just went blank and would not do anything, so I tossed it in the bin in OZ, to force me to get a new one!

I hunted all over for  new one, a Samsung, but they don't make them anymore, the type I was after...then I thought I'd try another brand, but they are all too complicated.

A guy then told me to look for an older model and suddenly it was May and I still had no camera!

I'd been using my phone camera, but somehow the pics don't unload easily, if at all, onto the computer from it, so all my blog memories are still in the phone!

Must learn to use that jolly phone this  year too. Have had it for about 6 years and my total bill has been a little over $11 dollars I think...sigh...the joys of modern technology hey!!!

Anyways, my promise to myself for this year was to learn how to send text messages, how to upload images from the phone to my blogs and then to actually call people and receive calls over here on it.

I have just used it as a clock until this year, now a camera too...dohhh.

Anyways, as I am usually pretty bright at technical things once I set my mind to it, I was a bicycle mechanic in my younger days and actually built bikes, built entire wheels and hubs with all the ball bearings, rollers for back pedal brakes and all in them, so using a little old phone should be a piece of cake.

Then I was a designer and house builder,  so I reckon I can conquer this phone thing in a shortish while and then eventually just take my phone with me on trips instead of lugging my poor computer everywhere to stay in contact with family and friends. My back pack will be so much lighter then too!

So, I eventually found a nice little camera that seems OK and ordered it...and it is now in Budapest, on its way to me!

Can hardly wait.

I find it easier to think, to plan to everything, with my camera and the subsequent pics I take...I don't know why, but it makes me more enthusiastic about everything around me.

Thinking  this might be a fun idea!

Lovely Budapest...Never get tired of discovering different angles to shoot from...

April when all the Irises are in bloom...

Rose time again...these roses bloom from May right through to November...

Cherry time came and went in a 7 week time frame from blossom to picking! Amazing.

Ye olde jogging track has its usual harvest of goodies for me in May and June...

And of course the morning glory just grows while you look at it.

Had to get some screws in town and it never ceases to make me smile...they count them, one by one!

This is going to become a fly screen door. We took out the bottom wood panels and all the glass and put in real fly wire. A decent paint job...and, hey presto!

Sunflower time again, right now...

Storks are very plentiful this year. Each couple produced from 3 to 6 babies each this year...the nests are bulging. The young ones have all just learned to fly this week, so I guess they be off soon.

Awesome fly screens. I found some real aluminum fly wire...very costly here, but at least it looks invisible! Imre has done all the windows and only has to complete the gauze door and make the cellar window screen.

Gladi time again...

This became the pic below, once Imre got his hammer going!

Looking to put a heater under the mantle and use these antique doors to cover it up.You put vent holes in the top and  make it look pretty!

My tomatoes are just ripening again...

A pretty sky...

Tomatoes everywhere last year. One days picking! Am just eating the last bottle from last year, before it starts all over again.

Another week and the elderberries will be ready to cook up and make into syrup and jams.

Last years pic again...but the harvest is the same. Have just bottled the last of the plums, tomatoes are coming on and the crab apples are ready to cook up by about next week too.

Almost a real house...at last!

Up in Eger again inside the massive church up there. Beautiful.

So pretty...

This is sort of what I'm putting on the big deck...without the lake in the background though!

This is the big deck...Flowers will go on the 3 levels, the pavilion on the top deck area, we chopped out the tree in the middle and the fire pit will be moved to a better area.

A funny sign in a coffee shop somewhere over here...Can't spell the town!

Imre putting in the power in the cellar...

White mulberries...not really tasty, just sweet.

Visitors out picking up some take away for the babies in the nest!

The clearest pic of the big deck from last year before we tore down the summer kitchen...

Happy birthday to my baby son! Have a great day Paulie.Love you heaps. xxxx

Here We Are Again!

Well, I feel like I'm connected to the world again now I finally have all my pics out of the phone...after about 5 years!

What a mess ...I now have up to 5 copies of some pics as the phone does not seem to want to delete the pics, but will work that out as time goes by.

Will start at the most recent pics and work backwards, if I can access the jolly images and see where I've been of late!

Things are good here, weather finally warming up and the colder weather seems to have retreated somewhat. Things are growing at breakneck speed. We measured the morning glory to see how much it grew in a day. Amazing...it grew almost 4 -5 inches, depending on the rain, heat or coolness.

The fence was bare 10 days ago and now it has vines covering it to the top wire. It will be amass of flowers when we next come back.
Tomatoes are growing very fast too, along with marigolds and gladiola.

Kerrie my friend from OZ is here and we arrived back from a 2 week stint in Croatia and Slovenia about 10 days ago for a rest, weed the garden, do heaps of work on the place and sort out the 2 part time workers here, before our next excursion begins.

Berry and cherry time coming up soon. Cherries getting bigger by the day now, everywhere on the jogging track. This was a berry market in Belgrade a few years ago.

When we came back from our 2 week escapade in Croatia, last week, we were met with this beautiful display from my lovely red roses again.

I cleaned up the big deck before leaving...bad mistake! It over grew with ground cover while away for just on 2 weeks...but I remind myself that it did look like this!

Our village storks are back again...they have 3 babies this year, not long hatched.

It is mulberry time too and the white mulberry tree I have is loaded with fat, juicy, very sweet, but otherwise, tasteless white  mulberries!

A lovely pic of Paulie, my youngest son, taken in OZ in Feb.

It is also Poppy and Cornflower time too, but...I just found out I can't get the 1500 plus pics we transferred from the phone to my computer, to come up in image searches for my blog! So, am back to square one again until I figure it out!!!

Dave, a volunteer from USA 2 years ago, turned these path blocks around to make the path wider and made a great job of it too. But it left us short a lot of blocks...so, guess what Imre's next big job is gong to be?

Yup, in 2 weeks time, when he has completed rendering the exterior of the tool and new machine shed, he'll make a new path along the length of the shed. That will make life a lot tidier I must admit.

Then he'll do the cementing around the house to stop the water sogging into the mud brick homes, like the custom over here is, then finally, he'll complete the front garden path!

I can't believe it is finally happening.

Then the temporary roof comes off the Honeymoon Cottage and the new highly pitched one will go up.

He has completed as much work on the interior of the honeymoon cottage as he can just now and needs it to be fairly water tight, so to speak, so he can put on the finishing wall surfaces etc. Therefore, it is roof on time!

OK...tried dragging and dropping the pics across and it seems to be OK! This is inside the big church in Eger...beautiful building and a huggge church. There was a wedding going on when we were there, so we had a double display of local goings on.

A bit snoopy, but!

Loved this...The bridal party had the train hired to take guests to and from the church...How cool was that?

The brides carriage! Note the number plate...

Anyways...this blog has been a bit all over the place but it is all sorted out and I have my France, Italy, Lake Bled, Split, Dubrovnik pics in the computer somewhere now, so can access them finally and start doing my real blogs again.

Cheers for now,
All the best,
Mary