They breed, I destroy: Review after a year of work in the allotment garden
I'm sitting on a pleasantly squeaky GDR porch swing, birds, ants, bees and flowers, the neighbors have friendly hello-how-are-you-today faces and hundreds of ripe cherries hang above me - allotment life is beautiful.
I spit two cherry stones into the rose bush and watch the commissioning video for the new Gardena Water Control Select, in Portuguese: “ Basta definir a hora oa dia semena. ” Even though I don’t speak any Portuguese.
And yet, I soon realize that the friendly garden center salesperson hadn't told me a crucial piece of information. In order to exercise selective control over the water, the Gardena requires a battery. " Disconnectable control panel. Not included. " No, it's obviously not included.
My mood darkens like the sky over Chemnitz . The squeaking porch swing is annoying. Where the hell is the lubricant when I need it? And why do I have to take care of everything on my own again?
We've been leasing a garden on the outskirts of town for a year now. This is the second summer, and I sometimes still insist that I abstained from the family council back then. My wife was in favor, and the children were too, but I was concerned that the garden would be more work than fun. Time for an interim assessment.
Nature cannot be controlled. Not by us.Such a garden is fundamentally an attempt to dominate nature, to organize it into flowerbeds, and not only, but above all, to protect it from itself: from the weeds that never die, from the slugs that never get their fill. It is, and I realized this after just a few weeks, a presumptuous and doomed attempt. Nature cannot be controlled. Not by us, anyway.
I sense it in the scrutinizing gazes of the full-time gardening retirees . They have perfectly trimmed hedges and lawns, as if we were in Wimbledon and not Saxony. They know how, when, and with what to prune trees, and that rose thorns aren't compostable. I had to learn this the hard way. Gardening lessons are lessons in humility.
Our division of labor is clearly defined: They grow beans, tomatoes, radishes, and zucchini. I destroy. I mow the lawn, trim the hedge, and root out anything that looks like a dandelion. Of course, I also have to take care of the slugs. In doing so, I develop a previously unknown ambition. It becomes a wonderfully mindless habit. Gardening is a vitality and an escape. On good days, it feels like a mini-vacation.
On the less good days, I just want peace and quiet. I want to lie on the porch swing, read, squint in the sun. But unfortunately, there's always something to do in the garden. Always! Another bed. Even more compost. And who's going to water all of this while we're on vacation ? I hate garden centers.
As I frustratedly put the watering computer aside, " it doesn't irrigate with just enough humidity ," it starts to rain. I curse, laugh, stuff three cherries into my mouth at once, and retreat to the gazebo. Oh yes, the windows need a fresh coat of paint.
In his column "Visit to the East," Paul Linke reports every two weeks on his life in Chemnitz and the surrounding area. Saxony sucks? No way!
Berliner-zeitung
