Thickets and pine trees covered the far side of the pond.
As a child Pushkin would spend the summer months at his grandmother’s country house at Zakharovo located about thirty miles from Moscow. The house, with its two wings and flowers gardens, stood on a hill surrounded by a large linden park and within a casual stroll of a big pond. Thickets and pine trees covered the far side of the pond. In “Epistle to Yudin”, written when Pushkin was just sixteen, he describes “my Zakharovo.”
“Epistle to Yudin”
“It is reflected in the mirror of waters, with its fences, its bridge over the river and its shady grove. My house is on a hill; from the balcony I can go down into the gay garden, where Flora and Pomona together offer me their gifts of flowers and fruits, where the dark line of old maple trees rises to the very sky and poplars rustle mysteriously. There I would hasten at dawn with a humble spade in my hands, or walk across the meadows, along a twisting path, or water the tulips and the roses and—feel happy in this morning's work. There beneath a spreading oak tree, I would become immersed in pleasant dreams with La Fontaine and Horace. Nearby a brook ran along noisily between its moist banks, hiding its bright current vexatiously in the neighboring woods and meadows.”