The winter scent of wildflowers. The midday sun stood overhead, smelled thickly of resin, and somewhere high, above the unthawed earth, it was pouring in, choking in its own unpretentiousness. The midday sun stood overhead

Current page: 7 (book has 15 pages in total)

Font:

100% +

A water infusion of nettle has long been used for hemorrhoidal, uterine and intestinal bleeding.

In recent years, nettle has begun to be used in scientific medicine for uterine and intestinal bleeding in the form of a liquid extract. Clinical testing has shown that it does not cause any harmful effects. The liquid extract also has diuretic, antifever and anti-inflammatory effects. To increase blood clotting, it is recommended to use a mixture of liquid extracts of nettle and yarrow. The hemostatic effect of nettle is explained by the presence in it of a special antihemorrhagic vitamin K, as well as vitamin C and tannins.

In folk medicine, a decoction of the rhizomes and roots of stinging nettle is used internally for furunculosis, hemorrhoids and swelling of the legs, and an infusion of the roots is used as a heart remedy. Sugared nettle rhizomes are also used for coughs.

An infusion of stinging nettle roots is used to treat tuberculosis. An infusion of stinging nettle flowers in the form of tea is drunk for choking and coughing for expectoration and resorption of phlegm.

Nettle is not only an internal, but also an external hemostatic and wound healing agent. Infected wounds are more quickly freed from pus and heal faster if they are sprinkled with nettle powder or fresh leaves are applied to them. A decoction of the whole plant is used externally for washing and compresses for tumors. Dried and crushed leaves are used for nosebleeds, and fresh leaves are used to destroy warts.

In France, nettle infusion is rubbed into the scalp to grow and strengthen hair in case of hair loss.

Even in ancient times, nettle was used in folk medicine as a skin irritant (that is, a factor in reflex therapy).

Nettle leaves, due to the phytoncides they contain, have the property of preserving perishable food products (for example: gutted fish stuffed and covered with nettles lasts for a very long time).

Young nettle shoots (stems and leaves) are used to prepare green cabbage soup. In the Caucasus, delicious national dishes are prepared from boiled crushed nettle leaves mixed with crushed walnuts and spices.

Nettle is also a very valuable food for pets. It stimulates their growth and development. Cows receiving nettles produce more milk and better quality. Chickens' egg production increases.

Coarse fabrics and ropes can be made from nettle bast fibers (and have been prepared before. – V.S.).

Nettle has a multifaceted effect on the human body and deserves wide use in medicine.” Ugh!

EXTRACTS

M. Maeterlinck

“They are interesting and incomprehensible. They are vaguely called “weeds”. They are not needed for anything. Here and there, in the wilderness of old villages, some of them wait at the bottom of the jars of the pharmacist or herbalist for the arrival of the patient, faithful to traditional tinctures. But unbelieving medicine neglects them. They are no longer collected according to ancient rites, and the science of “healers” is being erased from the memory of good women. A merciless war was declared against them. The peasant is afraid of them, the plow pursues them; the gardener hates them and has armed himself with loud weapons against them: a shovel, a rake, scrapers, a pick, a hoe and a spade. On the big roads, where they wait for their last refuge, a passer-by crushes them, a cart crushes them. Despite everything - here they are, constant, confident, teeming, calm, and all of them are ready to respond to the call of the sun. They follow the seasons without missing a single hour. They do not know a person who exhausts his strength to conquer them, and as soon as he rests, they grow in his tracks.

They continue to live - daring, immortal, rebellious. They filled our baskets with wonderful reborn daughters, but the poor mothers themselves remained the same as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago. They did not add a single fold to their petals, did not change the shape of the pistil, did not change the shade, did not renew the aroma. They keep the secret of some stubborn power. These are eternal prototypes.

The land has belonged to them since the beginning of the world. In general, they personify an unchanging thought, a stubborn desire, the main smile of the earth. That's why you need to ask them. They obviously want to tell us something. In addition, let us not forget that they were the first, along with the dawn and autumn, with spring and sunsets, with the singing of birds, curls, the gaze and divine movements of a woman, who taught our fathers that there are useless but beautiful things on the globe.”

* * *

I give those who come to visit me in Alepino to fill out a form. Not a hotel one, not an official one: year and place of birth, nationality and education, but my own, invented questionnaire - sixty-six questions. It is interesting both to me and to the person who fills it out. Because at least once in your life you have to sit down over a white sheet of paper and think about what your favorite flowers, tree, natural phenomenon are; what historical feat most admires you, what book do you value more than others, what historical figure’s fate seems to you the most tragic, or what do you see as the ideal of government...

So about the flowers. Most often, friends answer the questionnaire: chamomile, cornflower, lily of the valley, rose. There is forget-me-not, there are pansies, there is gladiolus, carnation, sweet clover... If you continue this questionnaire, you will probably see jasmine, lilac, bird cherry, chrysanthemums, poppy... Naturally, there is a more or less established range of popular and favorite flowers.

But one day, over a cup of tea in Moscow, the conversation turned to flowers, in particular about favorite ones. I remember the question was posed this way: if you ordered a painting from an artist to hang in your house, what flowers would you prefer to see depicted in the painting?

- Buttercup! - Tatyana Vasilievna exclaimed. - I would like a buttercup!

Her exclamation came unexpectedly. Why buttercup? But on the other hand, why not?

I began to remember buttercups, their glossy, varnished petals, I wanted to imagine what they would look like painted by an artist, but what I imagined was not a bouquet of buttercups, but our summer meadow. After all, it is by these flowers that you can find out in the summer where and how the spring muddy waters flowed through our meadow. At first they flow along the bottom of the ravine as a narrow and stormy stream, then, falling onto a flat meadow, they spread out into a shallow width, but still do not lose the face of the stream. Always, even on flat ground, there will be a hollow a little deeper than the rest of the place, and water will always find such a hollow. So, now overflowing, now narrowing again, now splitting into several stripes, now again gathering into one, the water reaches the steep bank of the river. Here she again appears as a muscular, lashing stream and falls noisily into the large river water to get lost in it, but eventually reach the sea. Water will flow to the distant Caspian Sea, a particle of it (well, at least a glass), perhaps, by the well-known Volga-Don, will end up in the Black Sea, and, having become salty and blue, walking there in the white-foamed expanse, the water will forget our green meadow, and how it flowed through it , made her way to the river, and how Seryoga Toreev walked along it in rubber boots, and how your humble servant jumped over it, leaning on a florid juniper stick, and how she managed to cut off and hold in herself a steep hillock with dark fir trees on it, with an oblique reflection, and how the April meadow soil through which it flowed smelled.

But the meadow will not forget her until autumn. Where it flowed in dark streams, the grass will thicken, and buttercups will bloom in golden streams. And it turns out that buttercups are the earth’s memory of spring water.

Of course: these friendly lacquer flowers bloom not only in the meadow, in place of muddy spring streams, but also in the garden, and near the road, and in forest clearings. They, to put it formally, actively participate in the creation of the summer floral scheme and yet somehow manage not to be conspicuous. You will pass by a clearing blooming with buttercups without paying special attention to it, just as you would never pass by a clearing blooming with swimsuits, daisies and even dandelions. But Tatyana Vasilievna exclaimed: “Buttercup! I would like buttercup!” – and there’s nothing you can do about it. Got into my favorites.

The same thing happened to me several times with poems and stories. You are thinking about some of them: to include them in the collection or not to include them? Not very successful. Without them, the collection seems to be more complete, stronger. Be greedy and leave it, don’t throw it away. And then a reader's letter arrives. It turns out that someone (even just one person) liked one poem that I didn’t want to include more than others.

The same thing happens with people. Look, she’s a plain, ugly girl, you’ll even feel sorry for her, and lo and behold, she’s more married than the beauty. This means that the matter is not hopeless for the ugly woman herself. There will always be a person who will see in her some beauty that is visible only to him and will fall in love with her.

And, as you know, there are no ugly flowers.

* * *

Dandelions bloom from spring to autumn. During the whole summer you cannot choose a day when you cannot see this flower. But still there is a time in May when their first, most friendly, brightest wave spills over the earth.

Muscovites, go to Kolomenskoye! In the early morning hours, the sun looks there from the side of the Moskva River, from the side of the famous “Ascension”, and you will first have to walk the entire green clearing to the museum, to the second gate, and then look back.

On the right you will see an ancient meadery, built of incredibly thick logs, dark, as if soaked with honey, with which the grass washing them with the green surf is so successfully combined.

Directly, at the opposite end of the flat clearing from you, on its other shore, as if like a lake, stands the white-sugar Kazan Church, with very blue (at least, blue of the May sky) domes. All the space between you and her (and the log meadery on the right) will softly and tenderly blind you with the pure warmth of the gold of dandelions.

It’s not surprising to see blooming dandelions in other places, and even in such numbers and in such, I would say, even distribution, but not everywhere the fragrant log meadery and the sugar-blue church look out into their golden lake. It seems that dandelions did not bloom here yesterday, but remained along with Kolomenskoye itself from the seventeenth century.

From all sides, from behind the cherry orchards, from behind the oak park, from behind the Moscow River and from the highway, the noise and rattle of the advancing city is approaching, which every year tightens the ring tighter. And the dandelion Kolomna silence is already trembling and cracking from this roar. Soon, unable to withstand the pressure, it will split and fly to pieces. A triumphant and gloating noise will surge and bury her, perhaps along with the dandelions.

One of my acquaintances expressed the idea in a conversation that every flower, in one way or another, by its appearance or at least by its design, stylizes the sun. It’s as if millions of little children began to draw it, as best they could. Everyone does it differently, but at the heart of each drawing is a round center, and rays from it in different directions. The round center is sometimes small, sometimes large, the rays are sometimes narrow, sometimes wide, semicircular, sometimes there are many of them, sometimes five or six, sometimes they are white, sometimes red, sometimes blue, sometimes like the sun itself.

The idea is approximate, but you can have fun. Although there is nowhere to put either a clover hat, or orchids, or all the so-called moths, or cereals, or some kind of cat's paw. But here’s the truth, the truth – the dandelion is copied from the sun.

Let us not think now that, having picked and held the stem, we are holding not just one flower, but an inflorescence, a basket, as botanists say, and that one flower is a thin tube with jagged edges (are you really going to send me to study the forget-me-not! ). But, looking at the clearing and seeing it all golden, it is impossible to get rid of the impression that some giant artist dipped his brush directly into the sun and scattered it across the green earth.

It looks even more like countless mirrors, each of which reflects the sun. The similarity is further complemented by the fact that when the sun goes away for a long time or at night, the dandelions close their flowers and go out, and the clearing now reflects only the monotonous darkened sky.

Almost all flowers turn to follow the sun during a long day, but very few flowers close in the absence of sun, including and especially dandelions.

No one knows (and probably will never know) why the dandelion needed a stem in the form of a thin-walled tube instead of an ordinary, green, rough stem. But everyone knows why it will then have a round, fluffy head. This plant enters the human consciousness, perhaps more precisely with this fluffy head than with the flower itself. It is not named after the flower (for example, it could be yellowflower, sunflower, sunflower, etc.). A – dandelion.

When Alexander Tvardovsky needed to find a sign of life, earthly existence and earthly joy for the poem “House by the Road,” he uttered the following words on behalf of the newborn man:

Why do I need to know that the white light
Not fit for life?
I don't care about anything
I want to live first.
I want to live, and drink, and eat,
I want warmth and light,
And I don’t care what’s here
It's winter, not summer...
I didn't move the chair on the floor,
Walking awkwardly after
I didn't blow away the dandelion
Fluffy head.
I didn't crawl out onto the porch
Stubbornly across the threshold,
I didn't even say "mom"
So that you hear, mom!

As we see, our humble “protégé” alone was honored to stand next to such significant eternal values ​​as light, warmth, the first step, the first word and even mother.

In fact, when hearing the word “dandelion,” don’t most people see in their mind’s eye not a yellow flower (even with a bee diligently crawling on it), but a white fluffy ball, and some of the most attentive ones also see a white swollen cake, with black holes, which remains after you blow on a dandelion and a whole parachute landing begins to slowly descend to the ground from the height of your height, your raised hand.

Parachute landing. We invented the parachute in the twentieth century. Dandelion invented it millions of years ago. It can be argued that nature found it by touch, blindly, but first you need to put a single parachute on your palm or on a piece of paper and look at it, if possible, with a magnifying glass.

We will see that all the graphics of this amazing device are worthy of the most accurate and beautiful drawing. Not to mention engineering and mathematical calculations. The weight of a seed, the length of a leg, the area of ​​an umbrella, everything is in strict mathematical correspondence, and if modern engineers, using slide rules and calculating machines, began to calculate such an aeronautical apparatus from the point of view of the optimality of its proportions, then they would arrive at the proportions and shapes of the apparatus, which you hold in the palm of your hand and which fly in abundance through the air on a windy summer day.

However, there are options. The coltsfoot also has a parachute, but its fibers start right from the seed and spread out into a cone, making the whole device look like a badminton ball, also called a shuttlecock. The salsify is closer to the dandelion, but since its seed is heavier and larger, the entire parachute, according to design calculations, is correspondingly increased in size. There are also very “lazy” options - a shapeless piece of fluff, and the seed is hidden in the middle. Compared to this ball of fluff, a dandelion’s parachute is as if a bicycle wheel sparkling with clear nickel-plated spokes next to a round piece sawed off from a log, which can also roll on the ground and was rolled by putting it on a nail and attaching it to a stick.

I can imagine a conversation when, having developed a project and calculated everything, the design engineer brought the drawings for approval to some designer more important than him.

“Everything is fine,” said the chief designer, “but if a seed, having flown away in the wind, has already fallen to the ground, is it worth it to rise again and fly further?”

- Understood. I'll fix it now. In the new drawing, the seed, smooth in the first case, was equipped with small sharp notches to hold it more firmly in the soil.

“You see, it’s a small thing, but because of it, the balance in nature could be disrupted.” Fine. I approve. Let it be so.

And billions of cheerful white fluffs flew with the wind over the green earth, so that more and more flowers, like little suns, would endlessly light up on it.

By the way, a salad made from young dandelion leaves, as they write in many books, is really edible and, probably, nutritious. To remove their bitter taste from the leaves, the French recommend putting them in salt water for half an hour. It's a matter of taste. From onions, for example, we do not try to remove the bitterness, but only soften it with sour cream, butter, other vegetables and herbs.

* * *

Take three hearts, as they are drawn when they want to be pierced with an arrow on a postcard, or as they represent the red suit on playing cards, and connect these three hearts with their points at one point. Make these connected hearts soft green, plant them on a thin stalk of five to seven centimeters in height - and you will get wood sorrel, or hare cabbage, an elegant, cute plant that adorns shady, mainly coniferous, and even more predominantly spruce forests.

In other herbs, the leaves sit along the entire length of the stem (like nettles) or are located in a rosette near the ground (like dandelions), but here they are especially so. The stem is smooth, like glass, translucent, pinkish, and closer to the ground it is dark pink to red. There are no scales or lint on it. He's like copper wire. It is crowned with the three leaves that were discussed.

The leaves, under the influence of a secret mechanism that injects elasticity and strength into them, either straighten and stay horizontal to the ground, soar, or all three droop and hang along the stem.

Thickets of undecked wood sorrel are most similar to a pond covered with duckweed, because all the leaves are kept flat, at the same level and form an even green surface, light green, luminous green, contrasting green in the realm of dark, almost black tones of a mossy spruce forest. Indeed, wherever it looks black; The tree trunks are dark brown, the needles are dark, gloomy, the air itself is twilight. Only the wood sorrel glows near the ground, as if a hidden electric illumination had been installed from below.

Taking the leaves by the leaves, it is easy to pull out the plant along with the long stem, which the lower, the redder, but, on the other hand, more transparent and glassy. Having pulled a few pieces, you roll them into a ball and put them in your mouth, you begin to chew. The acid of sorrel will seem coarse and somehow rough after the subtle, sharp acid of hare cabbage with an admixture of distinct sweetness. But like sorrel, you can’t eat too much. Yes, they say, and you don’t need to eat it in large quantities.

It is believed that this herb is a barometer, and a very accurate one. It folds its leaves when it rains. Knowing this, I began to look at her in the forest. I see the leaves are folded. That's the problem. Tomorrow we would need good weather. Walked a hundred steps - the leaves were unfolded. What a parable!

The wood sorrel fooled me this way for several days. Then one day, going out into the vast thickets of it, I realized what was the matter. On the flat, green plane lay a smooth forest shadow. But there were also light spots from the sun breaking through the spruce branches. And now it was clearly visible that in the shade the leaves of the sorrel were spread out and blissfully, but in the sunspots they drooped, as if afraid of getting burned. Well, it’s true, this grass is very tender. She should not be exposed to bright and hot sunlight.

In May, the wood sorrel shoots out another stem, thinner than its main stem. It rises above the green plane of the leaves, but still would be almost invisible in the forest shadow if a charming white bell were not blooming on it.

It’s white, but if you pick it and look at it in the light, it’s all covered in lilac veins and, as usual, yellow stamens in the depths of the bell.

Thus, here is a picture in a spruce forest: an even “duckweed” of wood sorrel, and above it, on invisible stems, myriads of small bells hang in the dark air.

It’s no worse when, near an old rotten stump, you sometimes meet a separate flock of wood sorrel, the size of a cap, but bright, fresh, and several bells hovering above it. Then you regret that you were the only one who saw this little forest fairy tale.

* * *

The herb in question is so unsightly and unnoticeable that, of course, no one except specialist botanists and healers (and in the Middle Ages alchemists were also very interested in it) would have distinguished it from the common summer grass, if not for the small feature, not just one of its wonderful properties.

It’s as if she doesn’t have flowers. Even if several pieces are gathered into one ball, they do not give the impression of a flower. The glomerulus is the size of a wild strawberry, and the color is greenish-yellowish. A sort of nondescript lump. What can we say about each individual flower, the little green match head. Meanwhile, the Rosaceae family.

You look and think, is this literally colorless creature (green is not a color for a flower) a direct and close relative of the queen of flowers, and not just relatives, but from the same family as her.

In one curious book (it is not in Russian) I read a more poetic than scientific idea that all flowers are divided into two main spheres and are built according to two basic patterns: five-ray and six-ray.

At the head of the first group (regardless of the accepted botanical classification) is the rose (five petals), at the head of the second is the lily (six petals), and so they reign, the two queens of the flower kingdom. And no matter how small another flower is (forget-me-not, for example, or lily of the valley), it is still either one or the other scheme, one or the other citizenship.

I’ll try to quote in approximate translation from German:

“The culmination of these two classes are Rose and Lily who lead them. They are queens in their kingdom. Like the Sun and Moon, Rose and Lily dominate the plant kingdom. They carry within themselves the radiance of ancient cultures. The sages of the East tried to introduce them into culture. All lilies bear in their flower the six-pointed star of Zarathustra. But all fruits and berries come from roses. Our cereals are also isolated from them...”

It is difficult to take seriously such reasoning, which gravitates towards the cosmic origin of terrestrial plants and even all life on Earth, but the idea of ​​​​two magnificent queens in itself is involuntarily attractive and beautiful.

However, speaking about our little grass, we had in mind a dry scientific classification, according to which, without any additional and almost metaphysical ideas, the common mantle unconditionally belongs to the Rosaceae family.

Let's imagine that the Rosaceae family would gather, well, at least at an exhibition, if people wanted to organize such an exhibition. The honorable throne place would, of course, be taken by the rose - seven thousand varieties and the same number of color shades. Velvet, silk, illuminated by the sun, with dark shadows lying in the folds of the petals, snow-white, yellowish, yellow, purple, crimson, burgundy, scarlet, black, lilac... The only rose that doesn’t want to be is blue. Well, that's up to her.

Standing modestly on the sidelines, having come to gather rosaceae, will be the rosehip, which, however, in botany is called dog rose, but from which, in fact, all seven thousand double varieties originated. It’s as if city beauties in fashionable outfits have gathered, they dazzle and fascinate, but, maintaining their dignity, the village grandfather, dressed for the holiday, sits on the side, from whom all this bright, magnificent offspring came.

The apple tree will not lose face at the Rosaceae Festival, when it rises like a white bride at the quiet spring dawn and glows pinkishly and attracts the bees.

Not a poor relative on the river bank, above the dark forest water, looking into a black mirror, will be covered in white by a bird cherry tree.

Bright pink peach (blooming tree), almond, cherry and plum - each tree has its own stature, each flower has its own time, its own place in the sun, its own quiet silent pride.

Let's go lower. The wild strawberry bush that came to the Rosaceae review is more modest, of course, than the blooming almond, but it appeared with dignity before the bright eyes of the queen herself: drive it if you want, but I am yours. But in general, if you look, how do my five white and clean petals differ from the same white petals of a cherry blossom? There are more of them. They lie like white clouds among the spring earth, decorating and transforming the appearance of villages, small towns, and the entire landscape. But, entering a pine forest, won’t you be happy to see entire glades in our white color?

It's like that. But what is this nondescript grass there at the doorstep? Scruffy and dirty? How dare she come here to the rose flowers? Get the impudent one out!

“It’s not my fault,” the nondescript grass would answer barely audibly. - I am your relatives. I am a rose flower, look in any book.

“You don’t even have a good flower.”

- What can you do. There is a flower, but it is very small. I’m trying my best, collecting several flowers into one ball, but my ball doesn’t look like a real flower, but looks like the green, still hard berry of my distant sister, the wild strawberry. But I must say that people know me, distinguish me from other herbs and love me in their own way.

- For what? Is it because of kinship with them?

- No. The thing is... I have leaves.

- Well, show me, what kind of special leaves do you have?

– In scientific books they are called multi-lobed, crenate-needle-shaped, but this does not mean anything. You'd better look for yourself.

Bending down or lifting it up to us, we would see a leaf that is not only familiar to us, but which has more than once awakened a spark of delight in us. Moreover, this delight did not relate to the leaf, not to the plant as a whole, but to the meadow through which we walked to the slope we were looking at, to the morning dawn and, finally, simply to life.

The leaf, carved along the edges, is collected into an accordion and rolled into a funnel. Covered with small hairs.

- Well, what's special about your sheet? - perhaps noble relatives would ask for a modest cuff. - A leaf is like a leaf. The thing is that it looks like a funnel.

- A handful. My leaf is collecting moisture. Medieval alchemists believed that this was the purest moisture that could be found on earth. They hoped that with its help they would learn to transform simple substances into noble gold. Sometimes it is my own moisture, sometimes it is heavenly dew, sometimes it is raindrops. Water, as you know, rolls off all your leaves and collects in my leaf. Therefore, when people walk on dewy ground, they see large round drops of light moisture, sometimes so large that they can even sip with their lips. My fibers prevent the dew from spreading all over the sheet and making it just wet. Mine is like this: the whole sheet is dry, and the middle, at the bottom of the funnel, is a rounded elastic ball, which from its own weight becomes flattened, flattened, but still round and silvery. I’m not saying anything, a drop of heavenly moisture is beautiful just on a stem, on an ear, and even more so on a pink petal, but still, without the sparkle of my full-bodied and precious drops, the earth would lose in its beauty.

If there is dew in the world, then someone must collect it so that everyone can enjoy the taste. But dew is not yet a drink compared to the moisture that I myself secrete and give to the world. And the birds drink from my leaves, and children, and some adults, for whom everything has not yet become emasculated and dead in their souls, for whom everything has not yet been reduced to a cut glass, for whom the forest is not just building material and firewood, the meadow is not just centners of hay, The sky is not just a place where planes and satellites fly. And most importantly, those who are not lazy and are not ashamed to kneel in front of a small blade of grass that holds a drop of moisture, by the way, the meadow, the forest, and the sky itself.

EXTRACTS

M. Maeterlinck “The Mind of Flowers”

“If there are unlucky and clumsy plants and flowers, it does not follow that they are completely devoid of wisdom and ingenuity. Everyone zealously strives to accomplish their task: everyone has a magnificent, proud dream of filling and conquering the surface of the globe, multiplying on it to infinity the type of existence that they represent. In order to achieve this goal, they have, due to the law that binds them to the soil, to overcome greater difficulties than those that prevent the reproduction of animals. Therefore, most of them resort to tricks, to combinations, to devices that in the sense of mechanics, ballistics, movement, observations, at least, for example, on insects, often preceded the inventions and knowledge of people.”

“If it is difficult for us to discover among the laws that burden us the one that weighs most heavily on our shoulders, then for plants there is no doubt in this regard: this is the law that condemns them to immobility from the day they are born until their death. They know much better than we, who scatter our forces, what to rebel against in the first place... We will see that the flower gives a person a heroic example of disobedience, courage, perseverance and ingenuity. If we were to apply half the energy that the little flower of our garden has developed in order to free ourselves from the various inevitabilities pressing upon us... we must believe that our destiny would be very different from what it is now.”

“...the propeller of the maple, the bracts of the linden, the aerial projectile of the thistle, dandelion, salsify, the bursting pods of the euphorbia, the unusual adaptations of the donkey cucumber, the fibrous trailers of the cotton grass and thousands of other unexpected and amazing mechanisms... there is not a single seed that has not invented some completely a unique way to avoid the mother's shadow...

There is in this kind, thick head (we are talking about poppy seeds. - V.S.) caution and forethought worthy of the greatest praise. It is known that it contains thousands of small black seeds, extremely small. It is necessary to scatter these seeds as conveniently as possible and further. If the capsule containing them were to burst, fall, or open at the bottom, the precious black dust would form a useless heap at the base of the stem. But it can only come out through holes pierced at the top of the shell. The head, having ripened, bends down on its footstool, “censes” at the slightest breeze and literally scatters, even with the movements of the sower, the seeds in space.”

“When the time for flowering comes (we are talking about one aquatic plant. - V.S.), the axial sacs are filled with air: the more this air strives to escape, the more tightly it closes the valve. Finally, it lightens the specific gravity of the plant and brings it to the surface of the water. Only then do the lovely little yellow flowers bloom... But then fertilization is completed, the fruit develops, and the roles change; The surrounding water puts pressure on the valves of the sacs, presses them, penetrates the cavity, weighs down the plant and forces it to sink to the bottom again.

III As in Natalya, in her peasant simplicity, in all her beautiful and pitiful soul generated by Sukhodol, there was charm in the ruined Sukhodol estate. The old living room with its rickety floors smelled of jasmine. The rotten, blue-gray balcony, from which, due to the lack of steps, it was necessary to jump, was drowning in nettles, elderberries, and euonymus. On hot days, when the sun was baking it, when the sunken glass doors were open and the cheerful reflection of the glass was transmitted to the dim oval mirror hanging on the wall opposite the door, we all remembered Aunt Tony’s piano, which once stood under this mirror. Once upon a time she played it, looking at the yellowed notes with titles in curlicues, and he stood behind, firmly supporting his waist with his left hand, clenching his jaw tightly and frowning. Wonderful butterflies - in colorful cotton dresses, in Japanese outfits, and in black and purple velvet shawls - flew into the living room. And before leaving, he once heartily clapped his palm on one of them, which was tremblingly frozen on the lid of the piano. All that was left was silver dust. But when the girls, foolishly, erased it a few days later, Aunt Tonya became hysterical. We went out from the living room onto the balcony, sat on the warm boards - and thought and thought. The wind, running through the garden, brought to us the silky rustle of birches with satin-white trunks speckled with black and widely spread green branches, the wind, noisy and rustling, ran from the fields - and the green-golden oriole cried out sharply and joyfully, sweeping over white flowers behind chattering jackdaws, who lived with numerous kin in collapsed chimneys and in dark attics, where there is the smell of old bricks and through the dormer windows golden light falls in stripes on the mounds of gray-violet ash; the wind died down, the bees sleepily crawled over the flowers near the balcony, doing their leisurely work - and in the silence only the smooth, flowing, like a continuous light rain, babbling of the silvery foliage of the poplars was heard... We wandered around the garden, climbing into the wilderness of the outskirts. There, on these outskirts, merging with the grain, in my great-grandfather’s bathhouse with a collapsed ceiling, in the very bathhouse where Natalya kept the mirror stolen from Pyotr Petrovich, lived white cowards. How they softly jumped out onto the threshold, how strangely, moving their mustaches and forked lips, they squinted with far-spaced, bulging eyes at the tall Tatars, henbane bushes and thickets of nettles that choked the thorns and cherry trees! And in the half-open barn lived an eagle owl. He sat on the fence, having chosen a darker place, with his ears erect, his blind yellow pupils rolling out - and he looked wild, devilish. The sun was setting far behind the garden, in the sea of ​​grain, evening was coming, peaceful and clear, the cuckoo was cuckooing in Trosha's forest, the pitiful notes of the old shepherd Styopa were ringing pitifully somewhere over the meadows... The owl sat and waited for the night. At night everything slept - the fields, the village, and the estate. And the owl did nothing but hoot and cry. He silently rushed around the barn, through the garden, flew to Aunt Tony's hut, easily landed on the roof - and cried out painfully... Aunt woke up on the bench by the stove. “Sweet Jesus, have mercy on me,” she whispered, sighing. Flies buzzed sleepily and displeasedly along the ceiling of the hot, dark hut. Every night something woke them up. Then the cow scratched its side against the wall of the hut; then the rat ran across the abruptly ringing keys of the piano and, breaking loose, fell with a crash into the shards that the aunt carefully put in the corner; then an old black cat with green eyes would return home late from somewhere and lazily ask to go into the hut; or this owl flew in, prophesying trouble with his cries. And Auntie, overcoming her drowsiness, swatting away the flies that crawled into her eyes in the darkness, got up, rummaged around the benches, slammed the door - and, going out on the threshold, randomly launched a rolling pin up into the starry sky. The eagle owl, with a rustling sound, brushing the straw with its wings, fell off the roof and fell low into the darkness. It almost touched the ground, smoothly reached the barn and, soaring, sat on its ridge. And his crying was heard again in the estate. He sat as if remembering something, and suddenly let out a cry of amazement; fell silent - and suddenly began to hoot hysterically, laugh and squeal; fell silent again - and burst into groans, sobs, sobs... And the nights, dark, warm, with purple clouds, were calm, calm. He ran sleepily and the babble of sleepy poplars flowed. The lightning flashed cautiously over the dark Trosha forest - and there was a warm, dry smell of oak. Near the forest, above the plains of oats, in a clearing in the sky among the clouds, Scorpio burned like a silver triangle, a grave cabbage... We returned to the estate late. Having inhaled the dew, the freshness of the steppe, wild flowers and herbs, we carefully climbed onto the porch and entered the dark hallway. And they often found Natalya praying in front of the image of Mercury. Barefoot, small, with her hands clasped, she stood in front of him, whispered something, crossed herself, bowed low to him, invisible in the darkness - and all this was so simple, as if she were talking to someone close, also simple, kind, merciful . -- Natalia? - we called out quietly. -- I'm with? - she responded quietly and simply, interrupting the prayer. - Why are you still not sleeping? - Maybe we’ll get some sleep in the grave... We sat down on the bunk, opened the window; she stood with her hands clasped. Lightning flashes mysteriously flashed, illuminating the dark rooms; The quail was beating somewhere far away in the dewy steppe. The duck that woke up on the pond quacked in warning and alarm... - Were you out for a walk, sir? - We were walking. - Well, it’s a young thing... We used to spend all nights walking... One dawn will drive us out, another will drive us away... - Was life good before? - Okay, sir... And there was a long silence. - Why is this owl screaming, nanny? - said the sister. - He’s not shouting at court, sir, there’s no abyss for him. At least hit him with a gun. And it’s downright creepy, I keep thinking: either it’s going to cause some kind of trouble? And everything scares the young lady. But she’s shy to death! - How did she get sick? - Yes, it’s known, sir: all the tears, tears, melancholy... Then they started to pray... Yes, everything is more and more fierce with us, with the girls, and more and more angry with the brothers... And, remembering the arapniks, we asked: - No So they lived together? - How friendly! And especially after they got sick, how their grandfather died, how the young gentlemen came into power and the deceased Pyotr Petrovich got married. They were all hot - pure gunpowder! - Do you often flog servants? “We didn’t have that in our establishment, sir.” How wrong I was! And all that happened was that Pyotr Petrovich ordered me to fool my head with sheep's scissors, put on a shabby shirt and send me to the farm... - What did you do wrong? But the answer was not always direct and quick. Natalya sometimes told stories with amazing directness and thoroughness; but sometimes she stammered and thought about something; then she sighed lightly, and from her voice, not seeing her face in the darkness, we understood that she was smiling sadly: “Yes, that’s what she did wrong... I already told you... She was young and stupid, sir.” “The nightingale sang for sin, for misfortune in the garden...” And, you know, my business was a girl’s... My sister asked her affectionately: “Tell me, nanny, these poems to the end.” And Natalya was embarrassed. - This is not poetry, sir, but a song... Yes, I don’t even remember it now. - It's not true, it's not true! - Well, if you please... And she finished quickly: - “As for sin, for misfortune...” That is: “For sin, for misfortune, the nightingale sang in the garden - a languid song... The fool can’t sleep gave - on a dark night...” Overpowering herself, the sister asked: “Were you very much in love with your uncle?” And Natalya dully and briefly whispered: “Very, sir.” - Do you always remember him in prayer? - Always, sir. “They say you fainted when they were taking you to Soshki?” - In a faint, sir. We street servants were terribly gentle... ready for reprisals... you can’t compare them to a gray one-palace! As Evsei Bodulya took me, I was stupefied with grief and fear... In the city I almost suffocated from unaccustomment. And as soon as we left for the steppe, I felt so tender and pitiful! An officer who looked like them rushed towards me - I screamed, and dead! And when I came to my senses, I lay there in the cart and thought: I feel good now, exactly in the kingdom of heaven! - Was he strict? - God forbid! - Well, was Aunt the most wayward of all? - One, sir, one, sir. I’m reporting to you: they were even taken to the saint. We suffered through passion with them! They should now live and live as they should, but they became proud and moved... How Voitkevich loved them! Well, there you go! - Well, what about grandfather? - What about those? They were weak in mind. And, of course, it happened to them too. Everyone at that time was passionate... But the previous gentlemen did not disdain our brother. Sometimes, your dad would punish Gervaska at lunchtime - that’s what should have happened! - and in the evening, lo and behold, they are already fattening on the mongrels, joking around with him on balalaikas... - Tell me, was he good, Voitkevich? Natalya was thoughtful. - No, sir, I don’t want to lie: I was like a Kalmyk. And serious, persistent. I read all the poems to her, kept frightening her: they say, I’ll die and come for you... - After all, did your grandfather go crazy with love? - Those after your grandmother. This is a different matter, madam. And our house was gloomy - not cheerful, God bless him. If you please listen to my stupid words... And in a leisurely whisper Natalya began a long, long story...

* * *
The midday sun stood overhead, smelled thickly of resin, and somewhere high above the ground that had not yet thawed, a lark rang and sang, choking in its own simple song.

Full of a sense of vague danger, Alexey looked around the cutting area. The felling was fresh, not neglected, the needles on the uncut trees had not yet had time to wilt and turn yellow... The loggers might be coming any minute.

Alexei felt like an animal that someone was carefully and incessantly watching him.

A branch cracked. He looked back and saw that several branches lived some kind of special life, not in time with the general movement. And it seemed to Alexei that excited human whispers were coming from there.

"What is this? Beast, man? - thought Alexey, and it seemed to him that someone was speaking Russian in the bushes. This made him feel crazy joy... Without thinking at all about who was there - friend or foe, Alexei let out a triumphant cry, rushed forward with his whole body and immediately fell with a groan as if he had been cut down...
(According to B. Polevoy. 134 words.)
* * *
The modern Russian language is a complex unity of the literary language, dialects, and vernacular.

The Russian literary language, having gone through a long path of development, has become more heterogeneous. Its bearers differ in social status, place of residence, profession, level of education and culture. And the literary language itself was divided into two varieties - book language and colloquial speech.

Book language is the language of scientific works, fiction, business correspondence, newspapers and magazines, television and radio. Colloquial is the language of informal communication. It is considered an independent system within the general system of the literary language. It is spoken at home, on the street, in the family, with friends and acquaintances.

Modern speakers of the Russian literary language speak both of its varieties. And, for example, Russian emigrants who left the country in the first decades of the twentieth century and their descendants practically do not know modern colloquial speech. Even in everyday life they speak the book language of the beginning of the century. This is why their speech may seem somewhat artificial.

* * *
We spent the summer in Serebryany Bor, in an old abandoned house with small staircases, passages, carved wooden ceilings, and corridors that suddenly ended in a blank wall. Everything in this house creaked. Doors in their own way, shutters in their own way. One large room was boarded up tightly. But even there there was a creaking and rustling sound. And suddenly a rhythmic rattling knock began, as if a clock hammer was beating past the bell. Raincoats grew in the attic, foreign books lay with torn pages and no bindings.

The house once belonged to an old gypsy countess. It was mysterious. According to rumors, she walled up the treasure before her death.

Persian lilacs grew thickly around the collapsed arbors. There were statues along the green paths. They were not like the Greek gods.

Life was so good only at the beginning of summer, as soon as we moved to Serebryany Bor.

(V. Kaverin, 118 words)

* * *
Poetry is a Greek word, it comes from the verb I create, I create. Poetry is something that is created, or rather, recreated by a person, his thought, feeling, imagination.

The ancient Greeks, as you know, called poetry the art of human speech in general, meaning prose and poetry, theatrical recitation and philosophical argument, judicial speech and congratulations to a friend.

Currently, we call only the art of poetry poetry, but in our minds the idea of ​​poetry as something sublime, beautiful, and unusual is alive. Of course, only those who have the ability to enter the intangible, invisible world (unlike cinema and theater), inaudible (unlike music), and only imaginary can love to read and write poetry.

To suffer, to be surprised, to rejoice, to be indignant about something that does not concern you personally, what may have happened to others, maybe not. Of course, the poetic principle in a person does not get along well with selfishness, vulgarity, and greed. It will either win and drive out evil, or it will leave you unnoticed, but forever. It is not for nothing that evil people, as a rule, do not like poetry.

(According to E. Dryzhakova, 153 words.)

Catherine wanted to build a waterfall on Neglinka, near the Kuznetsky Bridge, and place her statue above it, but nothing came of it.

In winter, there were fierce fist fights on the Neglinka ice. Students of the Greco-Slavic Academy rolled the cartilage of students with lead. In the twelfth year, Napoleonic guards washed their boots in Neglinka. In the twenties of the last century, Neglinka was driven into an underground pipe. And now we are traveling near Neglinka in this shiny carriage.

“And for us,” the girl suddenly said and became embarrassed, “it was very difficult for us because of this Neglinka: there are quicksand here.” Water constantly broke through, the fastenings cracked like matches, the lintels were blown away with one blow. Sometimes we worked waist-deep in water. We were afraid of this Neglinka, but it’s okay, we prevailed.

- You see! – the scientist said reproachfully to the writer. - You see! You are a blind person.

– What should I see? The scientist shrugged:

- Look at her, finally!

The writer looked at the girl. She laughed, and he laughed, and suddenly felt the joy of the rapid progress of the train, the river of lights flowing outside the windows, the roar of the wheels.

They got out on Krymskaya Square. The silver light of the snow stood over the Park of Culture and Recreation. In some places, clear, sharp lights still burned.

The girl ran along the river on skis. The skis rustled and rang on the crust. The girl looked back and waved goodbye.

Watercolor paints

When the word “homeland” was uttered in front of Berg, he grinned. He didn't understand what this meant. The homeland, the land of the fathers, the country where he was born - in the end, does it matter where a person was born? One of his comrades was even born in the ocean on a cargo ship between America and Europe.

– Where is this man’s homeland? – Berg asked himself. – Is the ocean really this monotonous plain of water, black from the wind and oppressing the heart with constant anxiety?

Berg saw the ocean. When he studied painting in Paris, he happened to visit the banks of the English Channel. The ocean was not akin to him.

Land of the fathers! Berg felt no attachment either to his childhood or to the small Jewish town on the Dnieper, where his grandfather went blind while using grit and a shoe awl.

I always remembered my hometown as a faded and poorly painted picture, thickly covered with flies. He was remembered as dust, the sweet stench of garbage dumps, dry poplars, dirty clouds over the outskirts, where soldiers - defenders of the fatherland - were drilled in the barracks.

During the Civil War, Berg did not notice the places where he had to fight. He shrugged his shoulders mockingly when the fighters, with a special light in their eyes, said that they would soon recapture their native lands from the whites and water their horses with water from their native Don.

- Chatter! - said Berg. “People like us do not and cannot have a homeland.”

- Eh, Berg, you crack soul! - the soldiers answered with heavy reproach. “What kind of fighter and creator of new life are you when you don’t love your land, eccentric.” And also an artist.

Maybe that’s why Berg wasn’t good at landscapes. He preferred portraits, genres and, finally, posters. He tried to find the style of his time, but these attempts were full of failures and ambiguities.

The years passed over the Soviet country like a wide wind - wonderful years of work and overcoming. Over the years, we have accumulated experience and traditions. Life was turning, like a prism, with a new facet, and in it, old feelings were refracted freshly and at times not quite understandably for Berg - love, hatred, courage, suffering and, finally, a sense of homeland.

One day in early autumn, Berg received a letter from the artist Yartsev. He called him to come to the Murom forests, where he spent the summer. Berg was friends with Yartsev and, in addition, did not leave Moscow for several years. He went.

At a remote station behind Vladimir, Berg switched to a narrow-gauge train.

August was hot and windless. The train smelled of rye bread. Berg sat on the footboard of the carriage, breathing greedily, and it seemed to him that he was breathing not air, but amazing sunlight.

Grasshoppers screamed in the clearings overgrown with white dried carnations. The stations smelled of unwise wildflowers.

Yartsev lived far from the deserted station, in the forest, on the shore of a deep lake with black water. He rented a hut from a forester.

Berg was driven to the lake by the forester’s son Vanya Zotov, a stooped and shy boy.

The cart knocked on the roots and creaked in the deep sand. Orioles whistled sadly in the copses. A yellow leaf occasionally fell onto the road. Pink clouds stood high in the sky above the tops of the mast pines.

Berg was lying in the cart, and his heart was beating dullly and heavily.

“It must be from the air,” thought Berg.

Lake Berg suddenly saw through the thicket of thinned forests. It lay obliquely, as if rising towards the horizon, and behind it, thickets of golden birch trees were visible through the thin haze. A haze hung over the lake from recent forest fires. Dead leaves floated across the tar-black, transparent water. Berg lived on the lake for about a month. He was not going to work and did not take any oil paints with him. He brought only a small box with a French watercolor by Lefranc, preserved from Parisian times. Berg treasured these paints very much.

For whole days he lay in the clearings and looked at the flowers and herbs with curiosity. He was especially struck by the euonymus - its black berries were hidden in a corolla of carmine petals. Berg collected rose hips and fragrant junipers, long pine needles, aspen leaves, where black and blue spots were scattered across the lemon field, fragile lichens and wilting cloves. He carefully examined the autumn leaves from the inside out, where the yellowness was slightly touched by a light leaden frost.

Olive swimming beetles were running in the lake, fish were playing with dim lightning, and the last lilies lay on the quiet surface of the water, as if on black glass.

On hot days, Berg heard a quiet trembling ringing in the forest. The heat rang, dry grass, beetles and grasshoppers rang. At sunset, flocks of cranes flew over the lake to the south, and Vanya said to Berg every time:

“It seems like the birds are abandoning us, flying to the warm seas.”

For the first time Berg felt a stupid insult - the cranes seemed to him traitors. They abandoned without regret this deserted, forested and solemn region, full of nameless lakes, impassable thickets, dry foliage, the measured hum of pine trees and air smelling of resin and swamp mosses.

- Weirdos! - Berg noted, and the feeling of resentment for the forests becoming empty every day no longer seemed funny and childish to him.

Berg once met Grandma Tatyana in the forest. She trudged in from afar, from Zaborye, to pick mushrooms.

Berg wandered with her through the thicket and listened to Tatyana’s leisurely stories. From her he learned that their region - the wilderness - had been famous since ancient times for its painters. Tatyana told him the names of famous artisans who painted wooden spoons and dishes with gold and cinnabar, but Berg never heard these names and blushed.

Berg spoke little. Occasionally he exchanged a few words with Yartsev. Yartsev spent whole days reading, sitting on the shore of the lake. He didn't want to talk either.

It started raining in September. They rustled in the grass. The air became warmer from them, and the coastal thickets smelled wildly and pungently, like wet animal skin.

At night, the rains slowly rustled through the forests along remote roads leading to no one knows where, along the plank roof of the lodge, and it seemed that they were destined to drizzle all autumn over this forested country.

Yartsev got ready to leave. Berg got angry. How could one leave in the midst of this extraordinary autumn? Berg now felt Yartsev’s desire to leave the same way he once felt the flight of the cranes - it was betrayal. Why? Berg could hardly answer this question. A betrayal of forests, lakes, autumn, and finally, a warm sky drizzling with frequent rain.

“I’ll stay,” Berg said sharply. - You can run, this is your business, but I want to write this fall.

Yartsev left. The next day Berg woke up to the sun. There was no rain. Light shadows of branches trembled on the clean floor, and a quiet blue shone behind the door.

Berg encountered the word “radiance” only in the books of poets; he considered it pompous and devoid of clear meaning. But now he understood how accurately this word conveys that special light that comes from the September sky and sun.