"Summer almost gone..." Topic

We were preparing to close the season in the summer house 65 km from Moscow, last weekend, it was one of the last warm summer days, and Doors songs (Indian Summer was another one) were musing in my head.
Autumn has a fragile beauty… same as old wood houses, flowers, and memories…
I remember being there since I was 5, my grandfather built most of the buildings there, it is up to me now to keep it in shape. My aunt spends there half a year from May till October, and it is a real beauty-on-the-cheap in summer. Wasn't able to give the place that much attention this season, as i had to move to another (empty) flat, hopefully next spring….

Enter if you dare…;)

[URL=http://s4.photobucket.com/user/Steelhand/media/Autumn/IMG_20140920_161556_zpsb5d543db.jpg.html]

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The house was started as a small 3 x 4 m block made on scarce materials grandfather had available in 50s.It is one of the rooms now.
BTW, this spade is from titanium ;)
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this is a miniature of giant space grasshopper, 1/72 scale
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while many of us are calling dacha "A Place Where Old Useless Stuff Ends" I still like what we have made inside the house.
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Flowers are the domain of my aunt, I can only do menial physical labour near them sometimes ;)
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first red streaks in the greenery…whith frosts at nights it will not be that long…

Thanks for sharing Barin. Your family has put a lot of love into the place.

Nice photos Barin, and great choice of Doors songs.

Agreed, thanks!

BEAUTIFUL and cozy-looking house and property, Barin! The Russian countryside looks absolutely colorful and peaceful. Thank you VERY MUCH for sharing your photos with us!

Oh yeah. I second your choice of Doors songs, too!

A beautiful place full of warm memories for when the snow comes.

Excellent, thank you very much for sharing.

Lovely! What a great place for the summer.

Rick

These summer houses are still a very important part of Russian life, and they can tell a foreigner a lot about us.
After year of trying to squeeze the people into giving up their old capitalistic behaviour so even the chickens were owned by collective, after Stalin's death the government started distributing small pieces of land near large cities to workers, veterans, artists, etc. The people were not getting ownership rights, but they could built and live on this soil. In theory, the places were ruled by collective, but it was more like a volunteer group, so no big influence on what individuals were doing.
Still, government imposed a pile of regulations of what you can and what you can't.
For instance, up to 70s you could not build heated houses. Up to the beginning of 80s you could not build a proper 2d floor on your house with the roof like we have now, and total amount of soil, covered with buildings was fixed.
At certain point inspectors were checking the number of fruit trees you had, and if you really growing something there.(the places were officially called "garden partnerhsips").
Still, with all this stupidity the people who came to the city from villages (like my grandfather/grandmother from mother's side were happy to have their own piece of land.
With total deficit of normal vegetables and fruits you could grow your own, and know exactly what kind of chemicals/fertilizer you were using.
Nowadays, it is less of back-up farm, but flower/fruit gardens. My aunt still likes to grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the hothouse, and a bit of garlic/spices, but the rest is flowers and grass….
Typical size of the place was 6 to 8 "hundred", i.e. 10x10 m – ours is ca.20 x 40 m. When my grandfather got the place, it was covered with trenches, as it was a front line between Germans and Red Army in autumn of 1941 – right near Naro-Fominsk, so for several years he was digging out cartridges and mortar shell fragments…

Interesting back story Barin, and that it was part of the front lines once! One thing I liked about the photos was how different a picture of Russia it presents, normally all we see in the west is Moscow's apartments and the Kremlin, maybe St. Petersburg, and stereotypical Soviet prefab industrial cities in the middle of nowhere.

We have the same ruling bodies over here. We call them HOA's. lol

What a great home with lots of memories. How did your grandfather get the property?

He was a WWII vet, brigadier at a plant, making special alloys for defense industry. Their plant received 2 dozens of land squares, he got one of them in a kind of lottery. Then, he started building. He was a professional carpenter, so could build with limited material of end 50-s mid 60s. The roof was built from scrap transformer metal, and it lasted till I replaced it 12 years ago…original boards on outer walls began to crack some time ago, so I've put fresh material over them with some isolation. Luckily we have no problems with material nowadays, but will never be able to make the stuff as he did. I wish I spent more attention when he was teaching me as a child…