When the day is coming and going away. Kosmaj mountain. Serbia

     The nature in Serbian mountains is very delicate and beautiful in every period of the day. October mornings are clear and rather cold while evenings are bright and warm.  

 

     

Flowers of mountains. Serbia

      Before chosing flowers for our garden it would be rather useful to know what kind of soil prevails  and what flowers feels better in this very area. We walked a lot in the nearby forests and crossed  enormous already empty fields. The dry soil and modest plants do not leave great hope for a flourishing garden. The dream seems will be much more difficult to acheive. The lay of fertile soil is half meter deep with a lot of clay. Rains are rare, and the sun will  burn out most of flowers. 

      What kind of plants to choose? I'll be grateful for your comment :)

October Thunderstorm. Serbian Mountains

     The nature of Serbian mountains is very beautiful, powerful and dynamic. Today after a week of very hot weather we saw a rare natural phenomenon for October - a strong thunderstorm. The music of Richard Wagner seemed the best to express these dramatic changes of the mountain nature.

The Beauty of Serbian Mountains. October

      We live in a beautiful place, which is full of sun and poetry. Walking with our dogs in the mountains I visualise our future garden.

Our Serbian garden & Russian landscape design

     We live now in Serbia, in a  magnificent place on the mountain surounded by woods and fields. We have a small parcel of land with an old garden which is waiting for its renovation. Trying to imagin the new life of this garden we looked through a lot of materials: mordern magazines and old volumes. 

      The project of renovation should be  throughly considered  and the previous exprience can be of rather limited use because of climate, landscape and soil differences. 

      Looking through variois publications I found a material about Andrey Bolotov, whose researches in the art of creating park and gardens can be of great value now inspite of the fact that he lived in the XVIII century.

     Andrey Bolotov was the farther-founder of Russian landscape design. Actually he was an outstanding scientists and had more than 300 publications. In Europe his name is well known, his work is highly evaluated in the sphere of landscape design, in particular.

       He knew very well decorative plants - trees, bushes, flowers - and created a magnificent park for the Russian imperor. Bolotov was also a talented painter, made a series of watercolors of this park and presented  them to Katherine the Great. 

       Practically all his life he lived in his homestead Dvoryaninovo (about 150 kms from Moscow). Today there is a nice museum, the forest and banks of the river still remind about  the beautiful park in the English style park that was created by thw owner of Dvoryaninovo more than 200 years ago.

An enjoyable pruning

       Pruning is a necessray phase of developing a garden. And this phase is not an easy one. All branches that are damaged or grow in the direction to the tree trunk should be cut off. Even very small branches as in a few months it will be necessary to saw them. 

        An ideal tree fruit tree shoul be as lace, without branches in the central part and sunlit. 

A tree that needs pruning badly.

                                          

         

       In our garden about ten years ago all the fruit trees were perfectly taken care of by the previous owner. However, today all of them looked rather abandoned. We didn't want to aggravate the situation and wait till we get all necessary instruments. We just bought a pruner in the nearest supermarket, climbed the trees one by one and sitting on the branches like monkeys cut off old branches,

       Thanks God, no neighbors passed by our garden at that time! The result was quite satisfactory:  more or less properly pruned trees and a lot of branches for a  Helloween fire.

Sunny presents. Welcoming neighbors - the main thing of life in a new place

    

      People often are afraid to change a place of living, particularly to an another country, because they do not want feel themselves as newcomers who have no roots and no friends. To find new friends is a very important factor for having a psycological comfort. 

      How to communicate with local folks if you do not speak the language well ? This difficulty can be easily overcome. Of course it's necessary to start learning local language. However, as a first step remember some phrases, how to say "hello", "please", "thank you". Be friendly and do not hesitate to say that you only started to learn language. 

      We are lucky to have very welcoming neighbors who  came just to say "Hello", listend what we tried to tell them, did'n understand anything,  presented a bag of wonderful grapes from their vineyard and explained with gestures that if we need something we ca come to them for  help.

My daughter can hardly hold the bag with wonderful grapes