It Seems That Even In Winter, All Roads Lead To Vines.

Thankfully there are wonderful vintners who turn their vines into wine...

At times I do get a bit blase about the calibre of wines produced in a mere few square mile from us. The magic square mile indeed and I heard a whisper of a hint that our wines are getting an extra avenue to showcase their lustre & muster.

The Ratschen is a thoroughbred among the eateries in our village and surrounds. Now and again it is rather nice to have a meal served the silver service way and have it enhanced by the perfect wine ( or vice versa ? ). As you can imagine, their wine cellar is a smorgasbord of choice that can entice any oenophile,..oh but to spend the weekend exploring it all. The wines have an extremely low carbon footprint too.

Well, it is whispered that a top chef is augmenting the Ratschen. A 3 Hauben chef would make our village feature again in Viennese circles. Did I mention that there are ten cottages for hire on the premises? Oh yes, arrive on a Friday and be on the receiving end of a round of culinary treats lubricated with a harmonious glass of wine matched perfectly from an extensive array of our wines.

Having been on the receiving end of Vienna traffic and the time it takes to go anywhere within Vienna, I am astounded and amazed that not more Viennese take a quick trip to our area for a weekend away? Good golly, it takes me 2 hours and an accomplished Viennese driver a mere 90 minutes...( Have a look at the Ratschen )

Thoughts are unbound and tend to flit into all directions. This morning I wanted to show you the road less traveled through our forest as it did receive a light dusting of powdery snow yesterday morning.

Romantic, isn't it? The stillness of this winter morning was only broken by the hopping about of birds on crackling leaves.

Finding beauty in the ordinary...

Sturdy and patient but comfortingly, ever present.

All roads in our village do lead to vines!

By the way, here is a link to Wine Tasting Event for 3 of our top Vintners in cities around Austria.

Biggi

This Proves It..I Love Clouds!

Clouds are just so darn stunning.

Do you think I should attend one of those meetings? If there actually is one for cloud - lovers like me. It drives Bob dilly when all of a sudden I pull out the camera and start to snap away. For me, one click is never enough and just in case I click many many times. Often I get an irritated

" My God, how many more pictures do you need to take. I can't take that clicking sound."

Personally I think he is more worried that I catch him unexpectedly...when he hasn't sucked in his stomach. Oops Schatzi, the secret is out but at least we don't Photoshop....

Yet, the other day when I took pictures of eh, clouds, he slowed the car down to a crawl and told me to take some extra shots. Oh yes, he'll go to those " Cloud addicts " classes with me.

On the way to this afternoon's class, this set me on course for another cloudy adventure.

Waiting for the kids to arrive I was privy to those beautiful clouds. The church is a perfect foil for them.

Please tell me that you can also see this heart shape? It may sound a bit corny, but I felt as if the heavens sent me a message of love.

On closer inspection, it looks like two lovers kissing.

Can you see the Superhero shape flitting in the clouds. Those slightly grey ones definitely look like a Superhero in mid-flight.

Very easy to guess this time, don't you think? ...a dog in mid-stride or possibly a race horse galloping.

A rather tame formation of clouds but still nice to behold.

Biggi

Vicious And Angry Looking Clouds That Turn Docile Like Lambs.

Weather with more Bark than Bite?

Do you also experience strange weather in your part of the world? Please let me know.. Anyway, yesterday was another scorcher of a day. In fact the whole weekend had been similar and feeling tired and lazy was the order of the day. Perhaps the cold & crisp Grüner Veltliner helped this languid feeling along. Wow, summer has not even started and already we are sweltering and enjoying unlimited sunshine.

When we told our friends that we were immigrating to Burgenland, Austria, Europe, they mostly imagined us shivering all year through and living in the mountains, just like Heidi in the TV series! If only they knew that we have hot enough days to give South Africa a run for its money. Well, some days at least with the added bonus of low humidity. Sweating is very rare here.

After lunch, the clouds started forming at first into a nice cotton wool look and then they darkened. Bob was teaching kids and I was doing a spot of long overdue gardening. Planting a tomato plant, that I had received as a present. Somewhere during the weekend someone had mentioned that putting crushed egg shells beneath any new seedling / plant, makes them grow big and strong due to the calcium. ( I think I heard it at the ladies dinner and another reason to go for another! ) As luck would have it, we had an omlette for lunch and 4 eggshells available.

The beauty of separating your rubbish, or greening it, is that eggshells are easily found without digging through mountains of general yukki waste. When I had put the plant nicely to bed and given it a spot of water, the sky was vicious. Almost olive green. My cellphone had beeped with a text from the insurance company informing us about a possible hail storm. Oh, I flitted about and battened down the hatches. Computer off, TV off, windows closed and most importantly...Tigger fed.

But the weirdest thing was that even though the clouds looked, oh so damaging and full of rain we only had a few drops of rain and they blew themselves over. Unbelievably I still had to manually water our garden. Our weather is definitely not the same as it used to be.

Biggi

Driving our nephew around on Saturday afternoon to show him the area. He wasn't disappointed. This is just a few kilometers from us. Divine, isn't it?

Clouds are the order of our hot days. You could almost feel the warm weather from these photos.

This photo goes to show how easy it is to enjoy the hot weather along with a glass of chilled wine while Grill Master Bob is sweating it out in West Ham United shirt and eh, hot - pants ( literally! ) Oh dear, men do have to work hard...

The skies darken. This was taken on Sunday but yesterday's were just the same...

Someone had rain, but not us!

Seriously, we had no rain even with these clouds...