My summer space

To my father, who can't wait to return to Jakubiwizna

August the fifteenth. A religious holiday - day off work (tomorrow too). So down to the działka, down to Jakubowizna, to feel the Polish summer in its later stages. The sun's still strong, it's still hot outside, the light's bright, and all is well. Vegetation remains bujna - luxuriant, lush. The good earth. My meadow, full of flowers.

Walking time, contemplation. Flashbacks - this is Mazowsze, it's also Kentucky. I'm just 22 miles (35km) from Mogielnica, where my paternal grandmother was from. Atavistic resurgence.

I've trod this earth before, experienced this before, just not here... but I am back. |And I love it here.

Out where the pine trees grow wild and tall...

Below: apples - what made Mazowsze famous. Still six weeks to two months from being ready for picking.

Below: I hear a 'krahhh!' to my right. I look round - and see no one, nothing... A bough has broken. The weight of apples was too much for the tree to bear.

Below: lines in parallel I - the orchard at the corner of my street.

Below: lines in parallel II - the modernised railway track from Chynów all the way up to Sułkowice - still much work to be done (I guess a year and half) before both 'up' and 'down' lines have been relaid, new platforms built and new electrical cables suspended over the tracks. The new ballast is like snow.

It's six o'clock, the sun is lower in the sky; but summer is still there in my nostrils, bringing back memories of those tail-end days of childhood summer vacations, when the joys of the beach were tempered with the knowledge that good things must come to an end - to return once more, after another winter.

This time last year:
Another Romanesque church dedicated to St Giles

This time three years ago:

Armed forces day flypast seen from Jeziorki

This time five years ago:

The ground parade part one: 1939

The flypast

This time eight years ago:
Dworzec Zachodni ('West Wailway Shtation') before the remont

This time nine years ago: 
90 years ago today - Bolsheviks stopped at the gates of Warsaw 

This time ten years ago: 
Kestrel 

This time 12 years ago: 
Armed forces day parade in Warsaw