golden jackal...

is called reed-woof in Hungary - as per the vicious beast fought in Arany's famous Toldi, and yes, Alan is sure he saw one - the one that eaten our veteran hens and colourful rooster. The English wikipedia and some Hungarian sites says it is now re-appeared and common after disappearing at the beginning of the last century; The Hungarian wikipedia says it's identification is debated - anyway, here is a picture from wiki - it's not even an endangered thing.

Otherwise, the second concert we've seen of the Pecs world music festival was very good, but a bit tiring as the middle -act Macedonian group was doing an hour extra - to audience demand - they were good, but not -that- good - a bit of variation was missing... Sebestyen Marta was as brill as usual.
Meal in Korhely was mediocre, we will give it a miss again for a few years...

I'm off to Budapest again tomorrow for a couple of days and on Wednesday back with Olga and granddaughter and co, they were waiting patiently for baby goats, but now decided, that the non-babies will have to do... Hope the weather picks up - clear but gusty and cold.

Inspected the new fruit trees, less cherries than last year, it seem to be bird-damage, the ones we found were lovely. It seems a good lot of peach or apricot for not yet 3 years old trees - don't know which at this stage.
The grapes are doing fine - will have a significant (to us) amount this year if all that visible will mature ok.

The lower garden looks so tidy and weedless, like if it belonged to one of the village old ladies, demonstrating good work by wwoofers and Alan. The new factory-rescue hens are laying beautifully, 4/5 eggs a day most of the time. Oh, and the insurance men fixed the storm damage, even replaced a few tiles in difficult places that were missing for ages but they were too far up for Alan to reach.

A nice portion of cut dill is frozen now, ready for the marrows...

you have to look up the picture of the golden jackal or nádi farkas
yourself, it wouldn't go into the blog, sorry.

a day in the life...

After some stormy weather the blue awning we enjoyed so flown away,
we have a rather large green one now which keep having to come down due to the gusty winds, is a bit of a nuisance, have to figure out one that handles more comfortably, they only sell tiny balcony-sets in the relevant supermarkets.

And now, my day - today: got p 6:30 fed cats/dogs, gone to shop,
put bedding to wash, put out breakfast stuff, prepared for Hungarian lesson, gave lesson, got lunch ready, cut the parsley row, got eggs and strawberry in,
got first washing out to dry put in the washer the second lot. Lunch: lentil spup followed by rice pudding, put second load out collected first, finished cleaning guest room, washed tons of dishes, vacuumed, bathroom really needed cleaning,
prepared for english lesson, gave said lesson, got evening meal stuff out;
meanwhile spanish couple hostelguests with lovely baby arrived, polish gentleman ditto, so the car port is full with 3 vehicles.
I did read abit before doing this blog - pictures next time.
Alan and wwoofers were weeding like mad all day, Elsie did all the re-putty-ing of the windows in the other house just in time before the influx of said guests... The storm brought the cold front and lots of rain - Alan is a tad worried about the hay he had no chance to cut and bring in - but we do have a couple of loads in already.
oof... still, isn't it fascinating that our little village in the back and beyond was found by belgian wwoofers, spanish couple and polish chap... the villagers are as puzzled as I am...

mixed but mostly bad

We can declare now - definitely no little goats this year,
I could murder the horrid chap from Ujpetre who done us in with his useless and expensive billygoat. Anyway, no milk, cheese to impress everybody with, sad sad sad. However - silver lining: Alan is visiting his dad without worry 12th June - 23rd June, tickets bought.

And we have elderberry concentrate instead (as well as the cider), and it is beautiful, aroma and taste, about 1:8 dilution with soda water, very refreshening. We have about 100 liter of the stuff... One of the pictures show Anja wwoofer using the left-over sugar to fix the awning before a storm...
the other picture has Liza and Barton, who returned as Very Generous and lovely hostelguests - welcome back any time even for free!

We could blame the death of the female stork on the lack of baby-goats... however, allegedly, the lonely male now has been joined by a female, though I haven't seen it yet. That would be good news.

Nora's cherries are far from being as nice and as many as last year, not good enough for bottling, only for eating, never mind.
The strawberries are doing well, and we had the year's first pea soup made out of the fresh stuff. Lois, we cannot but think of you when picking and shelling peas... and we have nice lettuce, redishes, spring onions, rockets, chives... the salad season is swinging.
Alan started to take his allergy tablets just in time, temperatures were upto 30C, fresh in the morning and evening, hardly any mosquitoes and flies. Which means, draught is a worry again...

Alan spotted tonight the big fox that done in all the old chickens and the poor colourful cock, dammit, yes, I keep forgetting telling you the bad news... Gus was barking like mad and Alan went out and spotted it. Unfortunately Gus must have slept when the murder happened. Anna is talking about traps... hm...

Oh, yes and the statues... for a cheerful note... got them from Mustapha and Tahar as a thank you... the pair of golden-haired and bronz shorted boys (from the Pecs sunday market) playing basketball in a rather loving manner should be raffled for a good cause in one of the gay bars in Canal street, Manchester... the other is about 8 kilos of Sahara sand crystallised, it is growing on me...

working at freezer contents

so we had lecso and non-smoked pig-chopping style sausages
as well as icecream on cream balls with whipped cream - hmm quite a lot of cream in this dessert maybe... anyways,
more picturesque things happened; we went for a hungarian style bbq to Dodi's in Pecsdevecser, we took with us Olga the lost wwoofer and Sumeth, the hostelguest from Thailand, who decided to stay longer. Besides him you can see Alan in heaven as he was allowed to play on a proper electric guitar and Dodi played the drums with him. The walk there was beautiful - see landscape; and we have seen a large owl, who was only a baby, look carefully for ligh gray amongst the very green branches of the tree. Otherwise not much happened in two days -
Timi and Dodi decided to learn English again... the first re-awakening lesson went well, all English speakers present helped in the end.
After the lunch (see above) the others departed for the Dark Dog,
I am enjoying the peace and quiet - I am still reading that 900 page
Perdido Street Station, 400 pages to go...

getting hot

Alan is still hopeful about getting little goats... anyway, pictures: the Siberian berry - first harvest - might get more than this handful yet - tastes like a bit sour blue berries. Also the nasty geese, they were in the front loan for a few days to keep the grass down. Looked pretty, if noisy. From tomorrow they are going to share house with the ducks. Swallows got in Alan's workshop again, which makes life a tad difficult for them. Alan's holding a baby bird that got lost. It is beautiful, the colours not quite visible... You can see wwoofer Olga in the distance, she had some long days, the collected hay turned out a bit wet, so it all had to go out to dry... today, being a proper hot day (25C+) the awning went up. It looks good, not as out of the place as I thought... let's see how will it cope with the first night, and with the first storm. Very pleasant to sit under it.
We have lettuces and reddishes, besides the ever present sorrel.
Better empty those rather full freezers before the new season...
Run out of carrots and onions!

mother's day

... is the first Sunday in May, see my mum
with the beautiful flowers, and that she's
doing fine.
Yesterday (5th) was my dad's
memorial get together in the Mariott Hotel
which used to be the Intercontinental.
It was really well done, with pictures of
my dad's life and achievements and lots of
speeches, all about that and about what a decent
and human-centred person he was, with his style,
sayings, jokes, the help he gave when it was needed
etc - lots of tears
choked back by the contributors,
Jutka did very well
indeed. The big ball-room was full of people, even though
we had also lots of apologies from people who couldn't make it.
there will be pictures...

majalis

Well, it was a long day this May Day, and eventful... at around 10 we were taken to the beautifully done new park in Ujpetre, where there was a bogracs cooking competition - large family groups spreading around their particular couldren bubbling merrily, kids running around, bouncy castle, face-painting, rodeo, candy-floss, icecream, and even quite bearable loud music, and most of all warm sunshine...
We were invited to Pali's circle, beef and venison cooking - 10+ kilos of it... we didn't win, but it was very nice, if not quite as spicy as we expected. We took our leave at about 3 - and luckily we were given a lift from the other end of Ujpetre, before yet another serious storm could get us. We had one of these yesterday with hails - luckily we did not see any damage. We had this same thundering and lightening darkness circling above for more than three hours. After 6 when it was cold and still chucking it down, Timi took us to Dodi's band's hour long do to the Youth Club in Ujpetre. It was a bit of a small room for a full setup
surf-band, but they were good, very pro stuff, enjoyed it. Again, we got lucky with lift to home, Anna's Jozsi stopped for us. We took a bewildered Tahar everywhere with us... he seemed to enjoy it all. (he's the algerian new resident of Kiskassa, and my eager student learning Hungarian)