Wednesday, May 30, 2012

siesta, as it just can be

If just everyone were sleeping so properly in the afternoon, we would be much happier and healthier. And in the meantime there would be no noise.


even more sleeping

A new secret garden in the city, have a look!

on Friday and Saturday morning you can already pick up the backpack / willow basket / IKEA bag / children, sit on the bike / tram / car and head to Margit utca, the Buda bridge head of Margaret Bridge, where now opens and from now regularly works the Margit Market, converted into a flea market on Sunday and into a music / dance / show garden in the evening. To anticipate a bit of the atmosphere, the pictures of the garden have already featured here, and since then it has been developed in full swing, so that ultimately they invite everyone interested with this beautifully composed poster:


For the sake of those unfamiliar with the area, here you are a map which indicate that you have to walk up a bit from the bend of Margaret’s Boulevard along the street leading up the hill, towards Gül Baba’s Türbe:


Margit utca on a larger map

We hope this place and market would be integrated into the circulation of the city’s everyday life. If you go there, write us what you saw!

Friday, May 18, 2012

breaking news

the lawn cutting people have cut out the shoots of the swamp hibiscus yesterday morning. when I ran downstairs, I just saw the very cut which arranged it. now I do not even feel like writing more.
of course this was our most risky plant. it could be suspected that it would be over in some way, either by the weather or by the hands of the locals. now, it’s short-circuited. it is now certain that we will not have any kind like this

Friday, May 11, 2012

A garden of others

One-image news for Friday evening: a little bit overcomplicated, but really welcoming penthouse terrace garden in New York. It seems to be just for sale.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

"I love to live in Hungary, because the moon and the stars belong to it"


The eighth district’s Vajda Péter Street’s blog links to our project The City of Tulips with a beautiful and detailed documentation. Bulbs have been planted at the corner of Vajda Péter and Delej streets, at the statue of Krleža, and next to the building of the Corvinus University. The lesson seems clear: there is both good and bad here.

 
VAN ITT JÓ IS, ROSSZ IS (There is both good and bad here) - director: Macskássy Katalin; photography: Bacsó Zoltán, Halász Gábor; editor: Hap Magda; sound engineer: Zsebényi Béla; music: Sáry László; expert: Schiffer Pál; production director: Mikle Judit; 1997.

Blue hour

The spring season of tulips is slowly over. We say goodbye to them for a while with the photos taken by Péter. The parted flower stems should be cut back so the bulb does not waste energy on seed production, but gets more strengthened for the following year. The next planting will be current in October. We will pop up with new entries on the subject at the latest by then. Keep with us, as on the one hand this is a good game, and on the other hand we cannot do all the job alone!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

whom does it hurt

The pár perc Budapest (a few minutes of Budapest) blog reported in a sad little news on the cleaning off of a small graffiti that has survived more than a hundred years.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the era of horse railways, flag-officer György Adorján etched into the clinker wall of the University during the probably boring hours of his job whatever just came to him. The naive work, made with great care, has conserved his memory until this spring.

The graffiti since 1901 and (under the mouse) in 2012

In some cities they manage to consciously preserve such little signs of the past, and this is not only mere sentimentalism, but also image building. Because the history of a city is made especially personal, and the city itself attractive and unique by these little stories which invite you to get to know it. Where we destroy our own values so that we do not even realize the devastation, the culture of poverty has won.


Larger map
How easy it would have been to draw a frame around the interesting area, and to spare only a few bricks from grinding. No specialist of city history or protection of monuments can always watch over every detail of a renovation; the porter of the building, even if he knows the spot, is not so much concerned to intervene in others’ work; and this otherwise minimal attention, care, independence or initiative cannot be expected, it seems, either from the workers or from those directly controlling the work. Therefore we stay in astonishment only afterwards at the sight of one more piece having been planed off from our own common memory.

I think this is the same problem that we so often face during our efforts of public garden development. Such as the public worker who cuts off even for the third time the freshly planted shrubs instead of going round them, because it really does not matter to him, and anyway, when else could he play with an electric lawn mower. How much richer we would be if we could just attain the blessed state of leaving things alone.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

An old picture

This photo of our garden has just arrived in the mailbox. It was made from a first floor window, probably on an autumn day, around 1972. Unfortunately the square itself cannot be seen on it. You can only see that the trees around the bus stop are still small, you can still see through their leaves to the school. The poplar before the house, as seen from the branches hanging from the right, was quite large even at that time.
We would like to encourage other readers, too, to share with us if they have any photo and related story on this neighborhood and on its disappeared everyday life.

Monday, May 7, 2012

working, May

we have planted a lot of things again.
mainly
- peanuts
- raspberries
- magnolia
- sea-buckthorn.
The Persian ironwood tree has amazingly started to develop,
I see that it will be the one after two hundred years to carry the memory that we lived here and we did not live in vain. I blink big ones with my mind’s eyes.
We clipped the hedge,
pruned,
raked,
watered,
put stakes,
dragged heavy things here and there.
to top all that, one of us left her mobile phone in the grass, and the other closed himself out of his flat.
then we had dinner
pictures tomorrow (that is, today).

Friday, May 4, 2012

A new community garden starting in Budapest

in the eighth district, along the Corvin Promenade, at the corner of Leonardo and Tömő streets, organized by the KÉK (Center for Contemporary Architecture), who will open it in the scope of a public release. Their appeal is this:




Would you also love gardening?
A new community garden opens! 
9 May 2012, 7 p.m., Corvin Promenade

You can learn everything on the garden and on how to get your own plot on the release of 9 May. It is important for as many of you to participate at the event as possible, in order to join this multi-year adventure in the best knowledge of all the details and conditions.

You can apply for the community garden only on the kozossegikertek.hu site, by filling out the questionnaire to be found there from 10 May on. If there are too many applications, we will select the plots by drawing.

We welcome, everybody, and we will try to answer every question!
Feel free to send this invitation to the mates living nearby, to the granny and her friends – let us have more urban gardeners in Pest!

Place: Grund Garden (Budapest, VIII. Nagytemplom u. 30.)
Time: 9 May, 7 p.m.

Life-saving help

A hawfinch nestling. The straight-running, peaky,
at the stem thick beak indicates it
to be a seed-eating bird

Because of the extremely dry spring and the sudden heat, the Ornithological Society asks us to assist birds with water vessels placed wherever just possible. On their site they provide with detailed advices those interested.
Their other article, very current from early May to as late as August, tells us what to do when we find a young bird or a very small nestling. In most cases it is the best to leave them alone, as far as they are youngs which have left the nest somewhat earlier. The article also helps us in the care of young nestlings and gives clues to determine their species. You’re definitely recommended to read it here.
(The photos and their captions are also from the OS article.)

The lonely rambling young birds (a blackbird chick in the picture)
are almost never orphans, but they are fulfilling the biological command

of “fan out and survive”, important for the survival of the species

werevolves or dawdling in love, or both in one


A rare moment, a favorable constellation of all factors, a soft spring month, serene sky expected, sitting in the herb with light wine you we can enjoy a super moon on Saturday night, as the Moon, rising at 18:28 and seting at 03:32 Sunday morning will arrive to the closest point of its orbit to the Earth, and in addition in a full moon phase. Others have already observed it too, and they have even made some increasing tricks with various lenses.
 

Tamás Cseh: Song of the Full Moon

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Lookouts

Although still in need of renovation, from the first of May you can visit again the water tower in the Margitsziget, where an exhibition space is expected to operate besides the look-out tower.
An alloy in the joy is that the entrance fee of 1400 forints (or at least the 800 forints’ student ticket) will be paid by relatively few people. So if you want to watch the panorama of Budapest from exciting sites, you’re recommended to monitor the events of Budapest100!