Fruit Garden

While Europe has been struggling under record heatwaves, little treasures—some sweet and sour, burgundy and red pink—started to pop up on our trees and bushes. As I realized, I could name only few of them in English out of my head, I had to look up the rest. Cherries and sour cherries¹, red and black currants, gooseberries. Also the tricky little hybrid plant creature called jostaberry that eluded me even in my native Polish². It is hybrid of gooseberries and black currants. My parents get me to gather them before they’ll be spoiled. I wasn’t eager to go out and do it under scorching sun at first. But gathering strategically while protected by shades of bushes or trees or very rare clouds, during late evenings, with earphones in and listening to podcasts, made this not only bearable, but sometimes quite pleasant activity.

I am spending the whole summer this year at my parents’ place. Well, since my accident I am here constantly since the last December, so it’s more than the summer. It is a small village, Nadziejów³. I didn’t grow up there, but it is 15 kilometers away from my hometown, Nysa, where I grew up. The most notable landscape of this village is beautiful submerged quarry, effectively making it wild swimming spot. It is surrounded by trees above it and it looks really striking, making it nice spot to visit even during cold seasons when swimming is not possible. Every season here renders the quarry in different, beautiful ways. It is very deep water, around 30 meters as far as I know, not very suitable for beginner swimmers or anyone who doesn’t feel well without having ground in reasonable distance from the feet. On the other hand it makes it suitable for schools of scuba diving. A lot of guys come here to just jump from rocks to the water, but fortunately I didn’t see anyone stupid enough to jump from the highest points available. Swimming back and forth from wall to wall is something that not much people, besides me, are doing, given the distance is rather big. I never felt compelled to do the jumping, considering it unnecesary bravado. Swimming back and forth on another hand, maybe not so flashy, but always felt more appealing to me, maybe partially because I loved swimming in general. When I’m going there during hot days, at moments, when I’m in the middle of the water, surrounded by greenery above me, swimming here feels like getting glimpse of the paradise. Currently, it also counts as form of physiotherapy, since even my doctor said to go to the pool as soon as I was able (in first months after accident I was stranded in bed). My left arm has its share of training.

Submerged quarry in my village

Returning to my parents’ house, it is worth to mention that it was built on the ground of former apple orchard, that’s why we have so much fruits. My parents cut most of the trees to make space for the house and other stuff, but there are still enough apple trees and some other fruit trees and bushes are left . They also planted vegetable and herb garden for our use. They already had mint, but I asked my mom to plant coriander too, because those two herbs are widely used in Indian meals that I cook.

This fruit garden has some permanent residents besides my parents. Our kitten graces its premises with her mischievious activities, while our doggie hides in shades most of the time, struggling with the summer sun. Some other cats and even dogs from the village occasionally visits, but usually rather sneakily, without approaching the house itself. We have also some wild visitors, like woodpecker that I managed to capture in photo. Herds of roe deers, maybe not very close to the closure, but can be seen jumping across crop field surrounding it.

Our young big doggie

Mischievious little kittie up to something

In our village, there are other beautiful views beyond quarry. Our house is placed just so nicely that we have mountain landscape stretched before our eyes when we go to a terrace at the back. I tried so often to capture the beauty of it, but photoes never capture how it really feels to see them live. All the mountains visible are on Czechia side, since the village is very close to the border. It makes mobile network difficult often, but views are a reward. At the terrace I have my favourite spot to read during warm days, in the hanging sitting place.

Mountain landscape visible from the terrace

It is truly great place to recover, hard to imagine better places for such purpose. My life here so far was split between rehabilitation, visits from family, reading, watching movies with my mom, leisurely cooking Indian food or working on programming and this website. Life brought me accident and of course I would rather not go through that, I still didn’t recover and I expect that I will have aftereffects even long after finishing my formal medical leave. But, taking the accident as just done fact, I’m grateful for this time here.