It's only a week since I last posted, but it seems like it was months ago. Is it that we both aged considerably due to the heatwave or is it that we were that busy? I think it is probably both. On Sunday around 4.30 in the afternoon Christine and Ian, our newfound friends from the Slovenian campsite, turned up. They spent the rest of the day and the night with us and departed the following morning after breakfast. They are very nice people and offered that if any time in the future we need housesitters they would be only too pleased to do it. They were off to Eger and then into Slovakia, followed by Poland. Since then I received an e-mail confirming their route and that they are OK.
In spite of the horrendous heat of never less than 20-22 Celsius at night and around mid-30's or more during the day, Roy and I had to do a lot of housework and garden work, due to both having been neglected while we were away. Especially the garden needed a lot of attention as the high heat and no rain whatsoever seemed to take their toll. The grass was slowly getting yellow (it's now nearer brown!!) and started to crack up. Never before in the 15 years we had this property did we see such wide and long cracks everywhere. Thankfully the roses suffered the least, probably due to their deep tap roots. The tomatoes and peppers were still alive, but with shrivelled up lower leaves. The geraniums looked a bit worse for wear, but after a good dousing and deadheading, they started to cheer up too. The reason why the garden is so labour intensive at the moment is partly because of the watering and partly due to having to pick up every bit of fallen fruit so that Roy's cefre barrels fill up properly. Unfortunately there will not be enough fruit for all four barrels, so we will have to go round scrounging again from others. Last year's source of extra plums have dried up, so new sources are being sought.
On Monday we went over to our Dutch friends in the village to do some interpreting. One of their neighbours wanted to rent the upper half of their garden for his pheasants, but I told him even before Monday that it is not likely that they will agree. I was right, they didn't. However, the two pheasants that he brought them as a sweetener got roasted and as their table is not big enough for 6 we relocated to our garden pavilion for dinner. I quickly cooked my salmon and it was a fantastic evening with good food, good booze and excellent company all round.
On Tuesday the heatwave was getting worse. The forecast was now for temperatures touching on 40 degrees Celsius in the afternoon and we decided to hide from it indoors. All garden work was now done before 7am and after 6pm. It was on Tuesday that we heard from Serena and Tony, old orienteering friends from England, whom we also met in Slovenia, that they were coming our way too. We did invite them to come and see us either prior to or following the Hungaria Cup, which both them and us are attending next week. So, we will have another English couple, this time for 3 days.
Wednesday was the day of the mysterious odour in the kitchen, which then resulted in a thorough scrubbing of the fridge and other nooks and crannies. For the first time ever we actually separated the glass shelves from their frame and that was a fight and a half in that heat. As I said on Facebook that day, the designer must have been a man who either had never been to a kitchen in his life, or if he had not to clean it. That day I also harvested some more tomatoes and peppers and made a lecsó. That is a delicious vegetarian dish that even Roy likes. In the afternoon we were back to our Dutch friends to say good bye as they were going home the following day. Roy also thought that if we ask them we might be able to pick up a few bucketfuls of their plums to fill the cefre barrels with. They said yes and Roy happily picked one large bucket full, which made him rather happy. We will have to get back and pick another bucketful before we disappear to the orienteering event on Wednesday next week and hopefully there will still be some left to pick when we get back.
Thursday was made infamous by the disappearance of our internet connection. It took them 30 hours to fix it and neither Roy nor myself were happy bunnies at all. I also made an uncomfortable discovery about my data connection on my smartphone. It didn't work! With the WiFi gone we were down to my aging old netbook with the mobile dongle, which was as slow as a sloth on cannabis. Thankfully I discovered that the extreme slowness was due to not having updated Firefox, so after I downloaded the latest version it sped up a bit, but was still aggravatingly slow compared to my broadband. The heat was by now decidedly around 40 Celsius and with no internet we were doing other things indoors, like filing and reading books, which was also very enjoyable. (not the filing!!!)
They were promising a cool down on Friday with the approach of a cold front. I didn't believe it, as I have heard this before a few times and nothing ever happened. Well, the West of the country had some rain - apparently - but nothing got as far as us. Roy heard some thunder and saw some lightning at night, but I was out for the count and heard and/or saw nothing. However, the air was a bit fresher in the morning and in the afternoon the sun didn't shine so fiercely as recently. The internet was back by early afternoon and somebody found us an old lady with lots of old, neglected plum trees in the neoughbouring village, whom we went to visit. She really does have a large number of old trees, but surprisingly very few of her plums were ripe yet. We agreed with her that after the Hungaria Cup we'll start picking and hopefully they should be ripe by then.
You may have noticed by now that I decided to illustrate this post with my roses. However, this little squatter, that grew from a seed probably dropped by a bird is definitely not a rose. It is growing through the edging and is hanging onto dear life. It looks like a petunia, but I am not sure what exactly it is. As it is quite pretty, we decided to leave it alone. And then finally today, we woke to a much cooler world which also had some wind, occasionaly quite fierce. We might have to take the big parasol in tonight as the front is definitely approaching and it did produce some wild weather in other parts of the country.
I pinched this photo from Facebook - I thought it was fantastic, although I am glad I was nowhere near this lightning storm last night. As the house was a lot cooler and because I was reading a travel report from the UK on Facebook, peppered full of pictures of cream teas, we decided to bake some scones today. We have never attempted anything like this before and had an additional problem of a few ingredients missing, but they turned out fantastic. They looked good and they tasted good. Now that we have a good recipe (it was from the BBC website!) and the confidence to do it again, we should definitely provide visitors with a traditional English cream tea in future. And finally, in the evening I even managed to sort my problem with data on my smartphone. I phoned up the technical advice people of my network and one very kind and easy to understand young lady explained which settings I failed to set on my phone and after a few minutes the internet was back, even without my WiFi on. Since then, I tried to work out whether I have been paying for my data connection totally unneccesarily for about 5 months or perhaps it was set properly initially and then got itself unset. Who knows? The main thing now is that I know what to do in future, should it start playing silly buggers again.
And on this happy note I say good bye. Next post probably after Hungaria Cup, unless there is WiFi in the Event Centre.
Postscript on Sunday:
Roy managed to put the engine back into the tractor and while it is a bit noisy, the cutting head shakes like there was an earthquake and it occasionally backfires (which it didn't do before) IT ACTUALLY GOES!!! And it only cost £60 for both parts and labour!
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