I hope the past week is an indication of mushroom troves to come. I have now been able to dry 4 jars of Judas ears for future soups. Last weekend my former classmate Viki and I tried our luck and made an early season search for morels. We were of two minds, seeing that all our classmates and teachers said that it was early yet, but we decided to give it a go anyhow. Our gamble paid off. Although a group of three Polish guys preceded us and all had full baskets when we met in the woods, Viki still came away with a full basket and I drastically improved upon my 1 morel last year with 500g this outing. Common morels are devilishly difficult to spot, often just barely peaking out of the similarly coloured leaf litter. Often I only spotted one by squatting down and looking sideways. We also gathered a bunch of dry Judas ears. I froze 200g of the biggest morels, and dried 300g elevated above the sparhelt until my haul looked like a few tiny beads. I will try and dry more mushrooms this year and avoid such a full freezer. Strangely, we did not spot any beautiful but poisonous false morels which can be easily confused with common or true morels.

There has been very little rainfall since the big flood, although it did snow once. I am still finding quite a few Judas ears, but dry. Scarlet elf caps are in huge abundance. Although they have no discernible taste or nutritious value, they are edible and can add wonderful colour to risotto and other dishes. They are also a bitch to clean. Kata and I picked the biggest ones we could find and pickled them in juice we had left over from consumed pickled cucumbers. Once we start pickling this year, I plan to add these colourful fungi to the jars as well.

We have a ton of violets, both white and purple erupting in our garden and along our road. Kata found a few recipes for violets, which in tea are said to be good for headaches and candied for cake decoration. We collected a cup of purple violets and dried them for tea. The candied flowers (using egg white and sugar) were not a success.

Our granddaughter Lili visited us this week for her Easter school break. I had ordered a couple turkey hams from our favourite butcher Tomi at the Hunyadi tér Market and brought them back to Szalonna when I picked up Lili. Tomi is now making his own turkey hams, smoked for three days. Delicious. After boiling it for 2 hours, we then cooked the eggs in the smoky water. Kata made several loaves of challah and decorated eggs with Lili. I made horseradish sauce to accompany the ham.

Easter Monday we went to Irota for dinner with our friends Lennard and Jeroen who are soon opening their Ecolodge for business. The third guesthouse is almost complete, and the swimming pool is getting there. The houses are beautifully decorated, and of course, as environmentally friendly as they could make them. Each house sleeps 6-10 and are rentable by the week. On the way, we stopped to look for morels and Judas ears, but instead only found enormous scarlet elf caps which we picked and added to the evening’s risotto. Jeroen also made a kohlrabi salad with coriander and green pea-squash cream soup. Kata made some catfish fillets from a fish caught by a colleague in Rakaca Lake.

On our way home the next morning we decided to see if the ramson/bear garlic was blooming yet in the spot we found last year. It was – an area a few hundred meters long! The leaves are still medium in size, probably needing another week or so, but they have luckily not flowered yet. Once they flower, the flavour loses its intensity. We picked a small basket full and will go back again next week for the more mature and larger leaves. Kata immediately made some creamy bear garlic soup when we got home.

The following day we visited our friends Simon and Dori in Szögliget who run the Juniper Cottage Guest House in nearby Tornaszentandrás. We admired their new garden layout and went for a short walk with the family while we awaited the verdict on our shaking car. No verdict, but a nice walk.

Back in our own garden, things are beginning to happen. The rhubarb is beginning to sprout beautifully, and the radicchio which we had left in the ground over winter is now developing nicely along with several rows of garlic. Simon recommended that we plant our root vegetables now, so we planted out our carrots, parsnips, celery, celery root, Swiss chard and onions, as well as sweet peas. I also planted coriander around where we plan for the potatoes since I read that this helps against Colorado beetles. And our tomatoes and peppers are finally beginning to sprout in our recycled egg box planters.

Our plans for an orchard are also shaping up. Norbi is going to put in a fence for us to protect the young trees from hungry deer who like to nibble on fresh fruit tree buds. Our colleague Edit has also kindly volunteered to help us design the orchard plan. Most of our trees are not producing or have been allowed to grow too tall to pick the fruit from, so we would like to plant replacements. We have a big wish list, including plum, apple, medlar, pear, blueberry, walnut, almond, gooseberry...but we are not sure where to plant them, how many of each, and both aesthetically and botanically what is the best layout.