Gardens in Russia

These photos were taken while I was on a business trip to Russia in late-August 2007. The market pictures were taken at the Vykhino Market, located outside Vykhino metro station. It's widely considered the best and cheapest market in Moscow. Many fruits, veg, meat and preserves make it up from the south of Russia and the Caucasus this time of year, belying the notion that all food in Moscow is drab old meat and taters. The prices in a market like this, though expensive for many Muscovites, are much lower than you'll find in the many Western-style supermarkets that have sprung up in Moscow and other European-Russian large cities over the past decade.

The country pictures were taken in a tiny village called Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula region, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) due south of Moscow. Yasnaya Polyana is Leo Tolstoy's ancestral estate, and is also the name of the village that sits alongside his estate. (Such was the common practice in pre-Bolshevik Russia -- most villages in Russia are named after the nearest estate.)

For a full-screen slide show, click here.