Summer wet and dry

Jakubowizna

Weather-wise, yesterday was awful. A long belt of rain, between 50km and 100km wide, moved its way up Poland, from south-west to north-east, with Mazowsze under a cloud that produced incessant rain for most of the day. The ground is waterlogged anyway; once the asphalt comes to an end, the paths are more puddle than track. I got my paces in and more, but all three pairs of my footwear here are soaking wet and muddy.

The worst part of a wet summer is the sudden rise in numbers of komary - Culex pipiens (there is linguistic disagreement whether a komar is a gnat, a midge or a mosquito in English, so I shall stick to the binomial name). Hot and wet summers bring them out in large numbers. From memory, this is the worst summer since 2011 and 1997. One bright spot - the country komary are a dozy lot and easy to kill. The urban ones are the selective offspring of hundreds of thousands of generations of mozzies fast enough to avoid a slap from a human hand before reproducing, and have lightning-fast reflexes. The rural ones are far slower, I slaughtered dozens yesterday. The walls of my działka bedroom have small black stains marking the spot where they met their demise - but no blood. I tell a lie - just now, I saw one above the door, splatted it - and yes, there was my blood, sucked out of me as I slept. A long dry spell is what's needed now. That, and my favourite insect after the bee, the dragonfly. Dragonflies live on a diet of C. pipiens, but this year I've not seen any iridescent beauties hovering around.

Work on fencing my działka begins early next month; I bought a pruning lopper to cut away at some of the branches intruding over my land from the neighbouring forest. There was a choice of two are the hardware shop in Chynów; Polish ones for 80zł, and Finnish ones (Fiskars) for 179zł. So the Polish ones then... Took a closer look. Yes, Polish brand (Rawlplug!), barcode starting with 59, but in small print on the packaging... Produkt ChRL (Product of the Chinese People's Republic). No thanks. The Fiskars it is then. Made in Europe, less transport, the Finns aren't engaged in human rights abuse - plus the Fiskars product is lighter and stronger and capable of taking down branches up to 38mm, as opposed to 35mm for the heavier Chinese loppers.

Cherries are ripe for the picking, so this year's batch of wiśniówka (sour-cherry vodka) will be coming soon. To make 1 litre of wiśniówka, take 1kg of fruit, washed and stoned, 500g of sugar, 50ml of spirytus rektyfikowany, leave for six weeks, drain the fruit and separate fluid from pulp, subject the pulp to a secondary fermentation, drain again, mix fluid with fluid from first fermentation, bottle and allow to mature - ready for Christmas drinking. 

After a morning of pruning back overhanging branches, the clouds began to gather. Clearing ground is a satisfying activity; balancing the human desire for order with nature's need to be growing. 

Lunch then (a stew consisting of chorizo, chickpeas, cherry tomato and spinach, flavoured with a few anchovy fillets and one piri-piri pepper), washed back with a half-litre of Baltic Porter. Rain clouds are building all around my door. My plans of an afternoon motorbike ride have become unfeasible.

Meanwhile, bad news on the railway front. Apparently in response to a parliamentary question, PKP PLK SA, Poland's rail infrastructure operator, has admitted that the modernisation of the Warsaw-Radom line will not be completed until 2023. This is dreadful! Only the other day was I watching a PKP PLK video showing the wonders of the line once complete - Radom-Warsaw in just 75 minutes, which suggests Warka-Warsaw in 45 minutes and Chynów-Warsaw in 35 minutes, compared to the current best time of 50 minutes.

Better news on the local roads front. Rumours that the level crossing carrying the road between Chynów to Jakubowizna will be closed seem wrong. Having walked around the patch, to my expert eye, the ungated level crossing, used only by orchard traffic, will be closed; the quid pro quo offered to the growers is that the muddy tracks will be properly tarmacked to normal standards, in return for the closure of the crossing on ulica Miodowa. Below: the new road will run straight along the axis of this photograph up to the horizon, then turn right. It will shave off about a minute's walking time between my działka and Chynów station.

And after lunch on the działka - back to work. More pruning, more slashing away at the undergrowth, using my scythe as a machete. I wanted to buy one along with the lopper, but the shop is sold out (the owner said they had their best-ever May, with sales up 250% over May 2019, as people emerged from lockdown to get on with heavy-duty remonty). Anyway, a machete would be useful for hacking away at the denser undergrowth (rather than for settling scores at closing time at a Nando's in Nottingham). In the meantime, the scythe and the lopper will have to do.

Below: this is where the garden pub will go. Peter, who visited yesterday with his son, came up with an excellent name - The Crown (korona - get it?). Bounded by cherry trees to the south, apple trees to the east and plum trees to the north, the 7m x 5m brick-built edifice is intended as a temple for erudite discussion over a tankard of ale or glass of wine. We discussed how to get the word działka into English as a useful loanword. Peter suggested creating an alternative etymology. Rather than coming from the verb 'dzielić' (as in to divide, to allocate, to allot, as in allotment), the word should come from the Raj - from the Hindi word 'jhalkah', meaning 'a nice place in the country'. That way, it will soon catch on in English!

Oh well - time to clean the place, close up and take the train back to town AND VOTE!

This time two years ago:
Rainy summer Warsaw moods

This time five years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

This time six years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time seven years ago:
S2 update 

This time eight years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time ten years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 13 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - yet another rainy summer)