PS [ to "The photograph with Nabokov holding a spade (and digging, perhaps?) was taken in May 1923. He was spending the Summer in the south of France, in a farm owned by his parents's friends ( Domaine-Beaulieu, close to Toulon). Cf. Vladimir Nabokov, A Pictorial Biography, 1991, Ardis Publishers."]
A smaller reproductionof the same is found in Brian Boyd "Vladimir Nabokov, The Russian Years." 
On p. 208/09 (Ch. "Regrouping",VII) Brian Boyd writes:
..."The farm lay on flat, burgundy-and milk-chocolate-colored soil...Nabokov loved the farm day's straightforward routine: rise at six to work in the fields alongside the other laborers [...] When he arrived the cherries were ready" ( inserted, a quote with VN's description of his experience as a cherry-picker). "Next came apricots and peaches to pick, fields of young corn to weed, infant apple and pear trees to prune. His favorite task was to irrigate the fields [...] Once as he sweated in the fields an Englishman, butterfly net in hand, dismounted from his victoria and asked Nabokov to hold the reins while he chased a two-tailed pasha flying round a fig tree. The swarthy, skinny your farmhand, tousle-headed, in rolled-up denims, startled the old gentleman by asking, using perfect taxonomic Latin, if he had captured this species or that in the area..."
 
(I hope a long quote is allowed by B.B?)
 
 
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