In brief dacha is a country cottage with a patch. Town dwellers come here for weekends and for a warm season starting May Day. It is the time when primroses, hyathintus and Narcissus are coming out from under the ground.

Summer cottage season ends in mid-September. At this time all flowerbeds are decorated with asters, gladioluses and chrysanthemums. Most often kids from Moscow and Moscow region go to schools with such flowers September 1. Surely children from other Russian cities and towns present such flowers to their teachers.

People treat dacha differently. But all summer visitors are knit by one amazing hobby-love for flowers. Horticulture passion keeps them on their toes. Plushy gardens are crowning glory for them.

One can see a summer cottage full of flowers and ornamental plants. Such gardens attract local residents of dacha settlement: some come to admire them, some come to discuss the landscape or ask for seeds and nursery transplants.

There are ones who go to dacha just to dig into the soil or to put in cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes and bell peppers. If you calculate the self cost of dacha fruit and vegetables you may be surprised to see that your dacha cucumbers and apples may appeared to be very pricy. But self-grown! They are ecologically clean products.

Soil digging diverts you from city problems calming you down. During summer time you are able to watch all growth phases of plants: form the bedding moment to the harvesting. Brairds, sprigs, sets, fruit… It is so spellbinding.

At Soviet times all Russian cities and Moscow in particular became surrounded by settlements for governmental, scientific and artistic elite’s summer holiday.

Today such settlements are called old-dacha places. The most well-known, prestigious and expensive old-dacha places are along Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. Representatives of the political elite of the Country took up their residence in Barvikha and Zhukovka villages.

There are a lot of old-dacha places of literary figures, composers, and military people on the way to Yaroslavl. They are: Boloshovo, Valentinovka, Zagorskoe. Later settlements for astronauts and scientific employees dealing with outer space exploration started to appear in this area. On the way to Minsk Peredelkino settlement is the one to be mentioned particularly. Old writes’ dachas are here. On the way to Ryazan there is one more old-dacha place called Malakhovka which held composers, bards, artists and sportsmen in thrall.

Dachas differ. Some are associated with Iran sheikhs’ palaces with hectares of land surrounded by a 3-meter fence around the perimeter. Others are quite plain with small plywood houses with moderate vegetables garden on 6 decares of land.

Dacha is able to narrate a lot about its owner: his status, income, taste preferences.

Everything-Russian admires prefer to have log houses and banyas (Russian saunas) which are warm and cozy. Some prefer function houses like Canadian ones or are fond of eco-buildings. Others build houses made out of brick for forevermore to be inherited by their grandchildren. There are those who try to achieve their child dreams building a castle with towers.