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Poisonous beauty
Once I bought small lupin plants to add them to my flower bed, they are such lovely flowers. But soon I found out that they are not only lovely-looking but also quickly-spreading and deep-rooting. If you don’t keep them at bay, they shamelessly displace other more modest plants. The other day I read an interesting and actually quite alarming article describing how mountain meadows in the national park Giant Mountains (Krkonoše) get overgrown with lupins preventing the smaller original plants from thriving and rendering the hay worthless because of their poisonous properties. Would you believe that only 100 grams of lupin seeds can poison a sheep? If I just imagine…
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Lost beauty of old factories
You must have seen them. Old factory buildings that used to be full of machinery producing all sorts of goods but after the companies lost their success at the market, all that remains is emptiness and a state of gradual dilapidation. I came across one of those buildings during our holiday in Giant Mountains, in the town Rokytnice nad Jizerou. The building housed one of the textile factories of the company SEBA, a company that used to employ altogether more than four thousand people. The local textile industry did not survive all the changes happening in the ninetieth and many of the factories were abandoned. There were some plans to…
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Colours of summer in Krkonoše
Krkonoše (Giant Mountains) is a mountain range located in the north of the Czech Republic. Its highest peak – Sněžka – is 1602 metres high and is situated on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland. My 6-year-old son was thrilled to be at the Polish border for the first time! Sněžka is the highest summit of the Czech Republic and it was crowded by ascending and descending people both from the Czech and Polish side. We went on the top by a cable way and then walked along the range. I loved the boundary stones showing where the border between the Czech Republic and Poland is. I found…
