Vladimir I have enjoyed you pictures very much.
You might be surprised to know that many Texans come from your country as my family came from Germany.
Many years ago they came to central Texas as it reminded them of home.

In many small towns they still speak in their native language.
As for the blonde hair I too was born with it now it is what we call dishwater blond.

I would like to go to eastern Europe some day.
I got to go there many years ago and had a great time it was like being home again.
Many people in our group didn't get along too well there.
I got along just fine and thought everyone was very nice.
I think it was my straight forwad honest attitude that made the difference.

Accepting other people's way of life can take you very far in an other land.;)

Worth

Lovely photos, Vladimir! Enjoyed the story about the castle, too. Funny to name it after a squirrel hunt!

I do love mushrooms and have tried to learn which ones in my area are edible. While I am fairly certain I've identified a few good and choice ones, there are too many dangerous ones here for me to take a chance. So there is only one that I will pick and eat. That one is called the Lion's mane, or bearded mushroom. It doesn't look like anything else, so I know it is safe! It is also very tasty!

Is that a type of bolete in your basket?

[QUOTE=livinonfaith;377122]Lovely photos, Vladimir! Enjoyed the story about the castle, too. Funny to name it after a squirrel hunt!

I do love mushrooms and have tried to learn which ones in my area are edible. While I am fairly certain I've identified a few good and choice ones, there are too many dangerous ones here for me to take a chance. So there is only one that I will pick and eat. That one is called the Lion's mane, or bearded mushroom. It doesn't look like anything else, so I know it is safe! It is also very tasty!

Is that a type of bolete in your basket?[/QUOTE]

Every Czech (Slovak too) is mushroom- picker. It is mania. There are many book about mushroom, it write about mushrooms in news papers and magazines and they are at TV too. The children learn from the parents and at the school too. They mainly learn to cognize toadstools, but it is sorrowful, that some Czech peoples také poision every year.: (
Vladimír

[QUOTE=Worth1;377064]Vladimir I have enjoyed you pictures very much.
You might be surprised to know that many Texans come from your country as my family came from Germany.
Many years ago they came to central Texas as it reminded them of home.

In many small towns they still speak in their native language.
As for the blonde hair I too was born with it now it is what we call dishwater blond.

I would like to go to eastern Europe some day.
I got to go there many years ago and had a great time it was like being home again.
Many people in our group didn't get along too well there.
I got along just fine and thought everyone was very nice.
I think it was my straight forwad honest attitude that made the difference.

Accepting other people's way of life can take you very far in an other land.;)

Worth[/QUOTE]

Worth, of course I didn´t know about Czech in Texas. I lived fourty years in the country, where the censorship wielded the press and those Czechs which exited republic after 1948 year as if they died (for example Lendl, Navrátilová, Forman, Madelene Albright). About USA was feasible to write only that what was bad. I got to hear something about Czechs in Texas in April this year (after emergency in the town West). Czech government got to West 250000 dolars, were some offerings of money and four children form West came to Prague. This all was at TV.
Vladimír

Vladimir I am wishing life is better for you and your people now.
Sometimes I forget the past.
My family picked mushrooms but moving from the farm I forgot how to look and pick.
I would poison myself for sure.:no:
Worth

The plums are most favorite fruit in on the east Moravia. They are doing from them favorite plum cookies (švestkové koláčky) and more favorite liquid plums (slivovice) with 55-60 % C2H5OH). I don´t cook usually at home. But I do some foods cook myself- for example plum cookies. I did them on last Tuesday. I have like them. Some pictures.
Vladimír

[QUOTE=MrBig46;377787]The plums are most favorite fruit in on the east Moravia. They are doing from them favorite plum cookies (švestkové koláčky) and more favorite liquid plums (slivovice) with 55-60 % C2H5OH). I don´t cook usually at home. But I do some foods cook myself- for example plum cookies. I did them on last Tuesday. I have like them. Some pictures.
Vladimír[/QUOTE]

The plums you show in the first picture are elongated ovals and look to me like what I know as Italian Prune PLums.

Is the flesh yellow and wonderfully sweet?

On the farm where I grew up there were two huge trees with those plums, planted who knows when by the Shakers when they owned the property and that takes us back to the mid-1800's.

I've been having a discussion with a local lady who says she won't eat ANY plum that has yellow flesh, only those that have red flesh. I told her that plums were domesticated in China, which they were, and then moved West and that the sugar level (Brix) content of yellow fleshed plums was higher than red fleshed plums.

Plum cookies? Never heard of using them for cookies, so why not cakes and more?;)

Just noting that my mother was a mushroom picker, learned from her relatives, and my brother and I used to go with her to find them. Not in the woods, but in abandoned pasture where cows used to roam.

I love mushrooms and in the Hudson Valley south of where we lived there were several commercial places where they grew the typical white button ones in caves and my father would bring home from market the oval boxes they were packed in.

And when I moved where I am today there was a wonderful place where they raised all kinds of mushrooms for sale, but the place burned down, so no more mushrooms from them.

The closest access I have to local mushrooms now is that they grow in the track of a sliding door, not on the track itself, but in between the screen and the glass door.

I don't harvest them, I just look at them.:lol:

Carolyn

[QUOTE=carolyn137;377795]The plums you show in the first picture are elongated ovals and look to me like what I know as Italian Prune PLums.

Is the flesh yellow and wonderfully sweet?

On the farm where I grew up there were two huge trees with those plums, planted who knows when by the Shakers when they owned the property and that takes us back to the mid-1800's.

I've been having a discussion with a local lady who says she won't eat ANY plum that has yellow flesh, only those that have red flesh. I told her that plums were domesticated in China, which they were, and then moved West and that the sugar level (Brix) content of yellow fleshed plums was higher than red fleshed plums.

Plum cookies? Never heard of using them for cookies, so why not cakes and more?;)

Just noting that my mother was a mushroom picker, learned from her relatives, and my brother and I used to go with her to find them. Not in the woods, but in abandoned pasture where cows used to roam.

I love mushrooms and in the Hudson Valley south of where we lived there were several commercial places where they grew the typical white button ones in caves and my father would bring home from market the oval boxes they were packed in.

And when I moved where I am today there was a wonderful place where they raised all kinds of mushrooms for sale, but the place burned down, so no more mushrooms from them.

The closest access I have to local mushrooms now is that they grow in the track of a sliding door, not on the track itself, but in between the screen and the glass door.

I don't harvest them, I just look at them.:lol:

Carolyn[/QUOTE]

Carolyn, you are right, that these plums are from Asia. They are very sweet and aromatic (very good for distillation of slivovice). On the picture is most sweet Czech variety of plum „Domácí švestka“. It is heirloom variety old a several centuries- moravians name its Karlátka ( according Czech king Charles IV. from 14. Century).
The cakes from plums bakes my wife. I needn´t that;).

PS.:Carolyn, do you know, that you have a university in Prague? The mentioned Karel IV. enterprised Universitas Carolina Pragensis in 1348 y;).

Yes, I do know I have a University in Prague.

I've lived many lives in the past and back then I was married to a very successful merchant who was very very rich.

When he died I inherited a lot of money and since the king was also a good friend, he used to borrow money from my husband, I gave the King enough money to develop a University in my name.

;):lol:

Carolyn

[QUOTE=carolyn137;377942]Yes, I do know I have a University in Prague.

I've lived many lives in the past and back then I was married to a very successful merchant who was very very rich.

When he died I inherited a lot of money and since the king was also a good friend, he used to borrow money from my husband, I gave the King enough money to develop a University in my name.

;):lol:

Carolyn[/QUOTE]

Wow, Carolyn you knew the Holy Roman Emperor?:shock:
I'm glad you escaped the Plague in Prague.:lol:

Worth

This is the garden of my mother-in-law (88 year). She do all herself. I do only the setting of potatoes and autumny rulling. I am not on the picture, he is my son.
Vladimír

[QUOTE=MrBig46;378299]This is the garden of my mother-in-law (88 year). She do all herself. I do only the setting of potatoes and autumny rulling. I am not on the picture, he is my son.
Vladimír[/QUOTE]

That looks like a very big garden for a woman of 88 to keep up, she must be remarkable.

I see fruit trees in her yard as well as over the fence on the right.

What are the most popular fruit trees to have in that area?

Do you live very near your mother in law and if so is your garden as big?

A picture would be nice, if you have one. especially if there's you in the picture, maybe even drinking some plum wine.;)

Carolyn

[QUOTE=carolyn137;378319]That looks like a very big garden for a woman of 88 to keep up, she must be remarkable.

I see fruit trees in her yard as well as over the fence on the right.

What are the most popular fruit trees to have in that area?

Do you live very near your mother in law and if so is your garden as big?

A picture would be nice, if you have one. especially if there's you in the picture, maybe even drinking some plum wine.;)

Carolyn[/QUOTE]

Carolyn,
my mother in law is fit, the work in the garden is her life. She want to do all what she can cope. She says me: „Vladimír, the shoulders ache me“. I answer: „ I am about 20 year less and the shoulders ache me too“ :D. But her daughter (my wife) is twenty years invalid and she can do in the garden nothing :(. The garden of mother in law is 20 km from my home, about 8000 sq ft, she growes vagetable (tomatoes, zucchini, onion, carrot, radical parsley, celery ,potatoes, etc.) on the area about 1600 sq ft, the other is grass, trees and flowers. She is living herself in the older house. She don´t want to migrate.The trees are all apple trees ( 15), she has a good cave where she can cache the apples. Apple trees are most usual fruit trees in our country.
My garden 16000 sq ft, from its about 12000 sq ft is grass. I have only fruit trees (30 treers , whose fruit I need not warehouse, I have no cave. They are: apple trees, plum trees (Stanley, Jojo,..), apricots (Bergeron, Harcot,…), peaches (Redhaven, Cresthaven,..), pears (William´s,…), cherry trees and walnut trees. I have red and black currants, gooseberries, raspberries and blackberries too.
On the picture is my son, I am a little older ( 1946 y.). I was there, where is the solitary spade on the left of the picture.
Slivovice is not wine, but brandy. On the east of Moravia, where are plum orchards, each does brandy, some in official still-rooms (big taxes), some at home (on the black). I don´t like Slivovice.
I drink wine or beer, but I drink alcohol a little . I don´t extend neither the diametral consumption of beer on the one Czech person (sumed including infants)- 37 US gal per year :)).
A nice day is wishing Vladimír

We wandered two days by „Moravský kras“ in last week. I forgot my mobile phone Nokia at home and I must use mobile of my wife. Some photos look like paintings of Claude Monet. Moravian karst is countryside full of chalky rocks, underground rivers, stalactical caves and chasmes. On two pictures is point named colour sands. Next two pictures- most abstruse chasm in Central Europe. It is low 138 m and it name is „Macocha“ – stepmother (currish). High bridgework (pic.3) is a place where a suicide jumps. There are five caves complex opened for the visitors. The „Punkva caves „ is most interesting for visitors, becaus it views on the garrison cap. The pictures from this cave is not my photos.
Vladimír

What grand scenery! The boat rides into the underground stream looks really tempting, but spooky! How lucky you are to be able to view these natural wonders.

I too, would love to see a photo of your remarkable mother in law. I hope I am still able to garden when I am 88, but at my current rate of aches and pains I have my doubts. I wish her many more years of independent living.