My Garden Is My Summer Life

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

From the Editor: We present the first book in the series "Gardens of the North-West", which is published by the publishing house "Russian Collection". The good news is that in St. Petersburg there have been publications on landscape design and gardening, which are not only useful to read, but also pleasant to hold in your hands and look through. Among the authors and co-authors of the series are the authors of our journal. With permission from the publisher, we are reprinting one of the chapters in this book. In the next issues, we will present to our readers other novelties from this series.

Not far from the Pushkinskie Gory reserve on the road to Novo-Rzhev is the village of Altun. Before the revolution, it was the estate of Count Lvov, and it was called Altona. There was a real castle with an observatory tower and a greenhouse where melons and grapes were grown. There was also a distillery and a colored stone warehouse with large stone bowls dug into the ground. An acute-angled carriage house, a beautiful small lake with numerous springs, two parks with a radial system of alleys and a pond excavated in the shape of South and North America with an antique statue on the isthmus have survived to this day. But the Reds came, and the count went abroad. Then the Germans came. As they left, they blew up the castle. A long period of battles for the harvest began, and fertilizers were stored in stone bowls, and then perestroika broke out.

Oh, sorry, I was going to tell you about my garden. Rather, I wanted to tell you about my second life - about my summer life, which is as strikingly different from winter as summer is from winter. My summer life begins in April, and then the population of Altoona increases by one person, that is, me. Winter life always comes in October, and although it imposes a city-like business pace, summer life does not disappear altogether. It flows like an underwater river somewhere below in a parallel channel, reminding of what happened, and anticipating what will be.

And it will happen that one morning I wake up, or rather, even in a dream, I will begin to sort out yesterday's worries: "… ask the editor to check the finished layout, view the quarterly reports …", open my eyes and see outside the window the arched window of the coach house with the dark thickets of hops last year. Lord, glory to you, Lord, I am in Altun! I can't believe the miracle happened again. And so, in a dressing gown and galoshes on fur, as if enchanted, "don't eat, don't pimshi," I wander along the paths of my summer life; with my eyes, nose, ears I try to catch undeniable evidence of her presence. Here is a starling sitting on an old oak tree by the well, in its beak there is some lace, probably moss. Crocuses and iridodictums hatched under the apple tree, so smart!

Red-haired Lachik looks at me attentively and smiles with his tongue hanging out: he knows, the cunning one, that I won't go for a walk with him in a dressing gown, what if? By the pond, pigeons - I will not come, let them drink. Dark trunks of old linden trees, apple trees with branches sagging from last year's harvest, impenetrable thickets of lilacs form a complete graphic landscape. The bathhouse has a second oak, or rather oak tree, already middle-aged, about three hundred years old, but strong and fruitful. In some years, the ground under it is covered with acorns, like ice crust. And here is an invaluable reserve: a repository of limestone slabs, discovered last summer by accident in the middle of a field overgrown with tall grass, in a hole that was once a cellar. Its walls were sheathed with slabs and the floor was laid out, most of them had long ago collapsed. Five times our "UAZ" with a trailer made trips until it brought this treasure. Soon a path will be laid out of the tiles, and they will receive a second life. The tall old foundation of the former human, overgrown with grass and bushes, is also waiting in the wings. I don’t know yet what it will turn into: maybe a grotto for solitude, maybe it will become the basis for a greenhouse or nursery. Nothing, stood for a hundred years, let it stand still.

Inwardly rejoicing and not making out the road, I walk around the garden in circles, I look and cannot get enough of it. In the end, I meet with my husband, who is looking for me, has already walked around everything twice and wants tea, because he got up early, before dawn, and chopped wood, but saw that the wolf had blossomed, and the bees, foolish after winter, were crawling along the primrose leaves. We go into the house, drink tea, and the sun shines through all the windows, and there is such a long summer life ahead, filled with wonderful worries, the most joyful in the world, which you cannot call worries, but simply happiness.