The Chekhovs put a lot of effort into gardening at the Melikhovo estate. Everyone had their own chores. Despite his advanced age, the writer’s father, Pavel Yegorovich, looked after the household, took care of the paths in the estate, kept an eye on the field work, and did the gardening. He liked to be accurate and kept a diary, where he would daily write about his concerns, make notes of the weather, a list of household chores, arrivals and departures of family members and guests, holidays and various details of everyday life. All this would usually fit into a single line written in neat, somewhat ornate handwriting.

Anton Chekhov’s father was both practical and poetic. In one day’s entry he could mention the number of bricks transported to a construction site and the number of buds on a blooming peony bush. Pavel Chekhov loved reading newspapers, and he did it out loud and, as they used to say, “from board to board”. Then he neatly filed the newspapers and stacked them on a trunk near the writing cabinet.

Anton Chekhov wrote to his older brother Alexander,

The photograph shows Pavel Yegorovich cultivating the vegetable garden of Chekhov’s house. Crops rare for our climate, such as artichokes, were grown there. Because of the unusual plants, which were popular in France, Chekhov called the Melikhovo vegetable garden “the South of France”.

The Chekhovs had a real cherry orchard, Anton Chekhov complained,

They used to make jam from cherries. In Pavel Yegorovich’s diary there is a record,