A Sweltering Day In Burgenland.

A proper heat wave.

Our family in Denmark can only dream of our weather and funnily enough we often dream of theirs. Isn't it funny how one tends to think of Europe as one place and feel that temperatures should be more or less the same? Perhaps I base it on living in South Africa where the only variation between the various areas hundreds of kilometers apart was hot and very hot.

After eight years I should know better because our own Burgenland weather is different in every village. I kid you not, the other day the heavens opened over Rechnitz ( about 13 km from us ) and gave a deluge of biblical proportions while we had not even a hint of a drop of rain.

The last few days have been hot and sweltering increasing steadily to unbearable as the week has progressed. Bob is usually off to work at twenty past five and this morning when I dropped him off down the road, I couldn't help but smile when I saw how many people were busy doing gardening in the hope of outrunning the sun's rise.

For some odd reason I have chosen the last two days to clip back our long hedge. Unlike most of our neighbhours we still clip the old fashioned way with a pair of hedge shears, a rake and elbow grease. Believe me I do at times envy the ease with which they sculpt their hedges with those specially created power tools, but then reason prevails. It more or less will take me seven hours to do the whole hedge and at most it is done twice a year. Spending anything upwards of 150 euros for such a optional tool is outrageous and a bit silly.

Granted, our hedge has a rustic feel to it but I find there is a bit of character in it. A leaf protruding here and another one beckoning there gives it that elusive rustic charm which has been kicked out the neighbourhood with elegantly manicured hedges and lawns. But, each to their own.

Of course the icing on the cake is the workout one gets when wielding a pair of garden shears for hours on end followed by raking up the trimmings with an old fashioned rake. Two birds with one stone...money saved and workout had.

Biggi