Sveta's friend Zhenya Vorontsov invited us to the stay at her family's dacha yesterday. Her father, Alexander, received the dacha 20 years ago, and with his own hands he built the home, shed, and two bathhouses. His wife Galina transformed the small plot of land into a garden unlike any I have seen before. Beets, onions, tomatos, peppers, strawberries, rasberries, currents, cucumbers, carrots grow alongside roses, lilies, camomiles, and flowers I did not recognize. "Everything you see here you can eat," Sveta explained. At regular intervals, Zhenya has stopped by our apartment to deliver berries, carrots, or potatoes from the other family home in the village. As a result, Sveta and I do not buy produce. Dachas in Russia are all the same size. The Soviet state distributed dachas reward to favored workers, and though some
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