Everything attracted the new landowner: planting the bulbs and watching the
flight of rooks and starlings, sowing the clover, and the goose hatching
out her goslings. By four o'clock in the morning Chekhov was up and about.
After drinking his coffee he would go out into the garden and would spend a
long time scrutinizing every fruit-tree and every rose-bush, now cutting
off a branch, now training a shoot, or he would squat on his heels by a
stump and gaze at something on the ground. It turned out that there was
more land than they needed (639 acres), and they farmed it themselves, with
no bailiff or steward, assisted only by two labourers, Frol and Ivan.

At eleven o'clock Chekhov, who got through a good deal of writing in the
morning, would go into the dining-room and look significantly at the clock.
His mother would jump up from her seat and her sewing-machine and begin to
bustle about, crying: "Oh dear! Antosha wants his dinner!"

When the table was laid there were so many homemade and other dainties
prepared by his mother that there would hardly be space on the table for
them. There was not room to sit at the table either. Besides the five
permanent members of the family there were invariably outsiders as well.
After dinner Chekhov used to go off to his bedroom and lock himself in to
"read." Between his after-dinner nap and tea-time he wrote again. The time
between tea and supper (at seven o'clock in the evening) was devoted to
walks and outdoor work. At ten o'clock they went to bed. Lights were put
out and all was stillness in the house; the only sound was a subdued
singing and monotonous recitation. This was Pavel Yegorovitch repeating the
evening service in his room: he was religious and liked to say his prayers
aloud.

From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melihovo the sick began flocking