If, as the saying goes, deep summer is when laziness finds respectability, then perhaps the Czech symbol for these dog days — the cucumber — deserves a bit more admiration.

After all, we all find ourselves in the thick of what is known here as okurková sezóna, the cucumber season: a time of long weekends, short workdays and that constant challenge to try to get anything done in this city after, say, noon. Forget Fridays.

Journalists dread this time.

"It's when the Loch Ness Monster articles usually appear," says Karel Hvížďala, a syndicated columnist.

Around this time of year Czechs — girding for the long winter ahead — have historically headed out to their summer cottages to pickle, well, just about anything: mushrooms, cheese, fish and especially cucumbers.

But all that looks to be a thing of the past: Pickle consumption is down 50 percent since 1992, the Czech Statistical Office says. And those still eating them are just as likely to buy a jar at Tesco before beating a path out of town.

"You can buy anything any time now," says Vďra Tomečková, a seasoned pickle maker from south Moravia. "Instead of growing pickles, people turn their gardens into lawns."

Thus, the cucumber, whether pickled or garden-fresh, has become another barometer with which to gauge the changes in Czech tastes and traditions since the fall of communism.

Home gardens now compete with hypermarkets. The family unit — a key ingredient to pickling weekends — is spread out, the kids studying in Germany or working in the United Kingdom. Czechs still disappear from the cities every August, but they are just as likely to be heading for Croatia as for their country cottages.

"Today's society offers new values and new possibilities for self-fulfillment," says Alena Křížková, a gender analyst at the Czech Academy of Sciences.

A matter of taste

Just don't tell the older generation that the homemade pickle is perishing.

Some diehards still make them by the bucket load in the country's small towns and villages, where the specifics of spice and flavor are taken seriously, and where another family's recipe is still something to doubt and, perhaps, hold in disdain.

Tomečková confesses she cannot stand the pickles her neighbor makes. "They are hardly edible. Way too much dill!" she complains.

The Czech contribution to pickling dates to the 16th century, when the area around Znojmo, south Moravia, started growing a type of small cucumber, cucumis sativus, and marinating it in spiced vinegar.

The famous sweet-and-sour recipe of Znojmo has remained the benchmark for pickle makers countrywide, although families have altered the recipe according to their own tastes.

"Some like them sweeter; others add extra vinegar, garlic or hot pepper," says Tomečková. In her town, Hulín, it is still typical for a family to make about 60 to 120 jars a year. "Pickling at home means huge savings."

Božena Podroužková, 79, has been growing and pickling her own cucumbers for the past 45 years. Her specialty is size, she says.

"The smaller they are, the better," the Prague native says.

But the work involved in preserving, let alone growing, cucumbers mystifies 27-year-old Kateřina ťihářová, another Praguer.

"It's a complete waste of time to buy cucumbers, bringing them home, cleaning them with a brush and then pickling them, when you can buy them in the store," she says.

The Polish pickle

Some say the beloved Czech pickle is under attack from foreign imports, yet another casualty of open borders and easy trade that came with European Union membership two years ago.

If the French are afraid of the so-called Polish plumber — the foreign worker who comes and takes local menial jobs — then some in the Czech Republic appear fearful of the Polish pickle.

Each year, increasingly more of these beloved snacks in Czech stores are imported, especially from Poland, industry observers say. While in 2001 only about 6 metric tons (6.6 short tons) of cucumbers meant for pickling were imported, the amount has increased tenfold since then.

Zdenďk RĚžička, director of the State Agricultural Company, says the influx of cheap pickles from Poland is putting Czech packagers and small farmers out of business. Today, cucumis sativus crops take up only about one-tenth of the fields they did 10 years ago.

Znojemské okurky, a company that set the standard for the famous Czech gherkin, went bankrupt in 2002.

"The quality suffers but cost is more important to people than taste," RĚžička says.

Jarring trends

Parsimony is not driving the decline in Czech consumption. Indeed, even at around 25 Kč ($1.12) a jar of average pickles in a supermarket, buying pickles can still add up for families that consume several jars a week.

As with many social trends, the forces are harder to identify. Perhaps jarring garden produce is just not seen as fashionable these days. (Though no politician as yet has dared wage war against the cucumber, like former U.S. President George H. W. Bush once did against broccoli).

One thing sociologists are certain of is that pickling remains, as it always has been, largely in the realm of the woman.

Křížková, the sociologist, says women spend about the same time on household chores as they did 20 years ago. The number of tasks has decreased, she says, but there is a higher standard for everyday housework — and that's time-consuming, leaving less time for preserving cucumbers.