I’ve just come back from an excellent holiday in these two countries and thought I’d share some impressions.
The dominant scent of Hungary in spring is of lilac. Lilac trees, in all shades from white through to deep mauve, are everywhere – in gardens, roadside verges and town parks. It’s delicious, if sometimes overwhelming.
The main memory from Slovenia, in contrast, is of the wonderful hay meadows full of wild flowers – daisies short & tall, buttercups, scabious, red clover, cowslips and this beauty, which I assumed was purple loosestrife, but my wild flower book says not. Anyone know what it is?
And the forest edges also had their own profusions of wild flowers, in this case wood anenome, wild strawberry, solomon’s seal, columbine, and black horehound (pictured – I had to look this one up!).
And, finally, a characteristic shared by both countries is a love of growing your own. Neat vegetable gardens were tended in the evenings, and I also saw what looked like allotment sites. Markets in towns of all sizes sold many vegetable & fruit plants – up to six varieties of each of pepper and tomato and exotics such as watermelon. Here’s a photo of part of the market in Ptuj, but even the main market in Ljubljana had plenty of choice for the home grower.
