Have you ever, like Elena, invented an urgent job at the dacha, then had to do it far more diligently than intended? One summer morning, she arrived at her aunt Marta’s for tea and some fresh peas. Two chairs stood beside the wooden shed, but her aunt was weeding the vegetable beds and suggested she join in. Elena had already crouched beside the weeds when she decided this was rather an ambitious start to her first morning off. She straightened up and pointed at the peas. “Sparrows. I’d better keep watch.”

There were no sparrows, but her aunt agreed at once: the lower pods were ripe, and it would be a shame to lose them to birds. Elena stood beside the bed and clapped a few times. When her aunt bent over the weeds, Elena stopped clapping. “Coming back, are they?” came a voice from behind the leaves. “Every time I turn away,” Elena replied, although she could see only stakes and her own feet. That meant she had to stay put. The chairs were only a few steps away, but she didn’t quite dare guard the peas sitting down yet: her aunt had seen how energetically she’d started.

Her aunt asked her to patrol the next row too, where more peas were filling out. Elena walked along, clapping every three steps, because after her account of the persistent sparrows, simply strolling no longer seemed sufficient. Her palms soon turned pink. She fetched a tea towel from beside the shed and began waving it over the bed. Meanwhile, her aunt brought tea directly to the peas: by Elena’s own account, she couldn’t leave her post. To take a drink, Elena tucked the towel under her arm, but her aunt glanced over, and she had to start waving again.

When an actual sparrow finally landed on a stake, Elena was almost pleased. She waved the towel, and the bird flew off. Now she was truly guarding the peas rather than pretending to be busy, so she moved a chair into the shed’s shade, where she could see both rows. “I made them up at first, to get out of weeding,” she told her aunt. “But I’m doing the job now. I’ll take the peas tomorrow too.” Elena set her tea beside the chair, picked a pod with permission, and laid the towel across her knees. Here she could sit, eat peas, and quite honestly leave the hoe alone.