I found myself in one of Moscow’s suburbs. Each street invariably ends in a garden or a cul-de-sac. There is a pleasant August aroma of warm and wet gardens blended with the bitter smell of dried poplar leaves. Ripe red rowanberries laugh in the evening sun. A girl with a white plait sits under a fence, handfuls of berries gathered on her knees, utterly given over to a wondrous assignment - the threading of the berries into a coral necklace. See more