Wiejski Dzień – A Village Day

What a wonderful day we had yesterday. Clear skies, a light breeze, wonderful. Today is a different story. We are considering building that ark.

We entertained ourselves with various forms of doing nothing. Well, at least I did. There’s a spade somewhere there in the grass under the apple tree. I believe it was even used by someone, but that someone wasn’t me. I am the one practicing the art of “relaks” in my plastic chair. I’m quite good at it after all these years of practice.

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We invented a new game to while the time away. Rotten apple badminton. The only problem being when the apple gets stuck in the strings of your racket.

I almost forget, we harvested our various crops.

nasze plony

Most of the wild strawberries (poziomki) didn’t make it to the plate. Our poziomki logistic chain is quite a short one involving wild strawberry bushes, little fingers and hungry mouths. The cherries were declared “słodziutkie” (sweet) by Lizzie and “kaśny” (kwaśny-sour) by Rosie. And the mint is necessary for mojito, the traditional drink of Polish villages. No? Ok, the traditional drink of Chris’s “relaks”.

PS My take on plastic chairs

Plastic garden chairs or as I like to call them “Cultures of the World Unite” chairs are the international common denominator. Pick any seemingly incongruous samples of culture and you will find the one uniting element among them – plastic chairs. American girl enjoying a day in her Polish garden? What is she resting her bottom and her feet on? Plastic chairs. KKK rally? What are the hillbilly rednecks sitting on? Plastic chairs. Bin Laden taped terror message? What was O.B.L. sitting on? A plastic chair.

The best use of a plastic chair I have ever seen was on CNN a few years ago. It took place somewhere in the Middle East, but forgive me I cannot remember exactly where. The journalist was interviewing a man on the street (standing) in front of a group of other men some standing and some sitting (on plastic chairs). They all were holding some impressive firearms.

During the interview the men in the background were vying for position, wanting to be in the shot too. They were standing up and sitting down, arranging their weapons and their faces in the most dangerous looking of poses possible. Until one moment, the moment when one young man stood up, intending only to straighten his robes and return to his seat. Unaware to him, his chair had been removed. As he stumbled, his bottom searching for the seat of the chair, all the men broke role just for a moment and started to laugh. Ok, dangerous poses were not overturned in favor of knee-slapping and tear wiping, but it was clear that the mood had changed. Then, suddenly, they remembered that they were on air and quickly composed themselves into a band of dangerous street-fighters again. Laughter. Another common denominator.