Algae taking over in Jeziorki

I feel a certain measure of guilt for not having waded down ul. Dumki at the height of the flooding a month ago - I know things were bad (the street was on TV news!). Four weeks on, of which the last was entirely without rain, and hot, I take a look to see what happened here.

Below: the pond at the bottom end of Dumki. Water level still high, the surface covered in algae bloom. This phenomenon, which I've never seen in Jeziorki on such a scale before, has been caused by fertiliser in the water running off adjacent flooded fields.

Below: not all water is affected. In this forest, lying a metre or so higher than the pond in the picture above, you can still see water. Indeed, to help the water find its own level, someone has left a length of hosepipe across the road to move clean water from the woods into the stagnant pond. You can just see the green hosepipe in the middle foreground of the pic above.

Below: I was thinking that finally - for the first time since the snows melted in March - I could walk right through to end of ul. Dumki with dry feet. Not a bit of it. A lot of water has indeed evaporated or soaked into the water table (still alarmingly high - summer storms could yet bring about more flooding), but the road is still impassable.

It may look like the smooth, green coloured asphalt used for cyclepaths, but this is muddy water covered in algae bloom. Way too deep even for the wellied foot. And as the waters do recede, (below) what's left is a grey carpet covering the soil, dead algae.

Worth pointing out for the record that not all householders on ul. Dumki have had running water restored as a blue water cistern is standing on the street. And ornithologists should note that there are more herons flying around the wetlands of Jeziorki than ever before (I counted five today). They are tempted here no doubt by the massive explosion in the local frog population brought on by the floods and general wetness.