Wintry scene

Amazing picture from Csaba Lóki, this photo was selected as one of the best at the Hungarian Nature Photographers’ Annual Prize competition. A thrush is munching on rosehips. I wish I could take a picture like this! Somehow I have a wonderful feel of winter, of cold (which I otherwise do not like much) and the coming holidays…

Rosehips are an amazing source of vitamin C. In Hungary, entire regions have wild rosebushes where people pick rosehips that are later dried and chopped and available in drugstores and pharmacies. Pour cold water over them and let them soak for a while and your "ice tea" is ready. Making a marmalade is another way of using them although it is a very tedious and long process (you have to remove the seeds from the tiny "fruit") and I heard that pálinka is made of rosehips as well.

We also have some  wild rose bushes in the garden, they are beautiful when flowers come some time early summer, but they are at their splendor at this time of the year, until, of course, birds feed on them during harsh winter days. I would not be able to take a picture like this, but a similar scene is possible in the garden.

We have started feeding the birds already as we had some really cold days in December.

Now the waiting is on, and after spending the prep days in Budapest, I cannot wait to see the Abbey from the far field of the garden. Hope some snow will come along...

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary

On the hill again

Dashing through the snow.... use no. 55555 of the hill....
No need to go elsewhere for winter fun!

What a nice morning it was.....

Winterland

Today, most part of Hungary is under heavy snow. 
This made me remember one particular winter (two years ago?) when the garden received an incredible blanket of snow, and we were there, enjoying the view and did some sledging as well.

I hope we will have a chance this year, and that winter wonders will not keep from us.
The garden is like a different world here, not the same we are used to so much...

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary

Getting ready for the Christmas Bazaar.

All natural, all home-grown, all hand-made

COME AND ENJOY NATURE'S GREAT GIFTS!

PLEASE VISIT OUR STAND (SMALLHILL PRODUCTS) 

ON DEC 7TH 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

in MPR

Great gift ideas for children and adults

This year it'll be a lavender-walnut year as we have prepared like products and home-made delicacies for the Xmas fair at the school.

Our products without making a complete list:

Giant Santa honeycakes
Lavender sachets
Walnut brittle
Sweet and salty chili walnuts
Walnuts in acacia honey
Traditional Hungarian honeycakes
Walnut-lavender muffins
Lavender essence for your home and health


and, of course, our Xmas Angels:


 

COME AND ENJOY NATURE'S GREAT GIFTS!

PLEASE VISIT OUR STAND (SMALLHILL PRODUCTS) 

ON DEC 7TH 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

in MPR

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary

Silent Joy

Waiting has started. We just had the first Advent Sunday of 2012.

This year I finally made it. I could, among the many hours of preparation for the upcoming Xmas Bazaar and all the things we had to do to get ready for it, I said to myself 'the day will not go by without making a few rounds in the garden.' I have not been outside for long when I decided to take a look to see some trees. Earlier, my father told us that this year will be a special one. 

We've had this garden for so many years, but I still remember when we spent weeks thinking about where to plant pine trees we wanted to have in the garden. Some were well placed, some did not have such good luck, but one thing is certain. After all these years, last year was the first that two of the silver pine trees (ezüstfenyő) grew so tall and big that they were actually blocking the view from my parents' room. 

So, one tree was cut and 'shipped' (it did not have a long journey though as it basically took about 10 minutes to get to the village church). It was our Christmas present for the village, which was the best place for our tree. It had spent the last 30 years with us, and the village it was still near.

 The other Christmas tree charmed us through last year's holiday season, and it stood beautifully through all warm days inside the house.

As I said, this year yet again, will be special. We have two more Xmas trees coming, and this time we can have one as well. We are thrilled, this never happened before. They will stand in the garden as long as it is possible. Ours is a very tall, 'skinny' tree, just about perfect (I do not care much for symmetry). I do not think that it is going to be a tradition to have our Xmas trees cut from our garden though. We just do not have the heart to cut down the really huge trees. And spring coming, of course, we will plant new ones again for my daughter and hopefully her kids. Perhaps I still will be able to see them enjoy a tree from the garden. Hopefully or as Spanish speakers say it so humbly and beautifully, fitting this holiday season: "Si Dios quiere"...

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary

LIGHT

Although all is much different now, as snow arrived last night at the garden, and it seems that winter is finally here, today while I was thinking about what to write about, I came across the common thread behind all the pictures I chose in the end:

LIGHT

This holiday season, LIGHT has many roles. Before getting down to write about the holidays, I would rather take a quite step back to the not-so-recent days of fall, how beautiful those days were this year.

Of course, the garden shows many of its faces as LIGHT reaches it. While taking the turn from the freeway and going a few hundred meters towards the next curve, the Abbey stretches afar, sitting upon the hills we Hungarians, normally call 'mountains' as that is what these hills are to us.

I have decided that whenever we will take that turn and see the Monastery for the first time, I'll take a picture of it, rain or shine. Later, when I have enough photos, I can record all the light stages of that very same view. I have been driving there for many years now, but not once had I found the same image. 

Nature is artwork, and one of its miracles we receive every day here on Earth is 

LIGHT.

Enjoy.

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary

Fall is here - again

Fall has come again although not with a lot of gusts of wind or rain, instead we can say that eventually it became so mild for November that we decided to go ahead and bake the pizzas in the outside oven. The results were pretty good - over the years I can say without exaggerating too much that our pizzas are quite good.

Ready for the oven

Sunlight became so intense that we went ahead and took some more pictures, for remembering these nice days in the winter cold that is yet to come as well as to illustrate these entries we are trying to create.

We have intense "harvest" of walnuts although with some trees we need to be concerned not to be "attacked" by Balthasar, our male sheep who in these "sensitive" days (he is overprotective of and/or agressive towards the female, Bori (we think we may have lambs next year again). Would be cool.

So we needed to lock them up for a while in order to harvest the walnuts.

They are very wholesome and good-looking this year, and we have tons of them!

I think we will go ahead and prepare some bags for sale, just in case, for later.

I immediately prepared some of those delicious spicy and sweet walnut snacks although I think I overdid some of the spicy side this time and we needed to air the kitchen afterwards, the fumes of the chili powder I used (I thought on the moderate side) chased us out of the kitchen. Never mind, once settled, we could thoroughly enjoy it.

Mom is experimenting with walnut brittles, they taste great, much better than those sometimes awful tasting "chocolate" (they have not seen much real cocoa powder) St. Nicks that supermarkets start selling this time of the year.

Well, it seems, the week-end is again nearly over, but we could achieve many things again. 

More to come. Safe week for all. Best wishes from

SmallHill (Kishegy), Hungary