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Sunday In Germany: I Hate Gardening

by Ken Yeager

As I look out the door or window of our winter-garden (a glassed enclosed, heated part of the house) I see my wife’s small rose garden, her geranium boxes lining the steps of the winter-garden to the terrace, and the bushes and trees that surround the grassy area of our yard.  It looks extremely pleasant, green, lush, and calming.  Calming that is until I have to cut the grass, weed, trim the hedge, pick up fallen twigs, dig out weeds between the terrace tiles and other back-breaking chores.  In other words, I HATE GARDENING !!!!!.

My grandparents on my mother’s side were English and my grandfather (Bobba to me, Bebop to my sister) loved to work in his garden, growing vegetables as well as flowers.  Somehow, that gene never flowed into my blood.  I hate gardening.  I am one of those people who like to finish something that I’ve started and I do get a small feeling of satisfaction when I am sitting in my chair in the winter garden with a cool rum and orange juice drink in my hand and looking at the yard that I just cut.  But I know that tomorrow, it will already have started to grow and I will have to be out there again in 8 to 10 days to cut it again.  Damn !!!  With yard work, it is a never ending job….only the winter offers a respite.

Of course, as winter comes creeping around the corner, I still have to contend with tons of leaves that fall from our neighbors protected oak tree…yes, protected by the government.  And from the trees in front of our apartment house.  Tons, I tell you.  AND every other year, I then get to have to deal with tons of acorns that come down in our yard.  Gardens are only made to be enjoyed if you can afford to hire someone to do the work for you.

Germany has a program of “Schreber gartens” or “allotment gardens” which are small plots of land rented by apartment dwellers and to which they escape to during the weekends or warm summer months (although not this year).  See what Wikipedia has to say about this by searching for “allotment gardens.”  Imagine, people rent these plots so do the kind of work I hate.  I have a friend who has a Schreber garten for which he pays good money.  I offered to let my do my gardening for nothing, but he turned me down. Oh well.

Now I used to hate winter and all the damn snow but since we bought a snow blower, hey, what a difference.  Two to three hours of work reduced to about 30 minutes of guiding the snow blower.  I am the envy of my neighborhood.  Sidewalks get cleaned in no time and then the driveway.  I love it.

My wife and I discuss the idea of moving into an apartment closer to Hamburg, but if we do we know we will have to give up space and with that, owning less things, meaning getting rid of furniture, clothing, and lots of other things.   But I guess if at 67 I can still handle a 700 lbs motorcycle, then I can push a lawnmower and I don’t really want to move….  I like it here and I do have to say, we have a nice garden.

Have a good week and be safe.

1 comment to Sunday In Germany: I Hate Gardening

  • Ken – You need to get up to speed with the *modern age of technology* to automate, simplify and reduce the back breaking labor of yard work – LOL – 🙂

    Might I suggest the following as a point of departure:

    1. Buy a robot lawn mower (solar powered). You just let it roam around mowing the lawn while you lounge sipping a Ba Moui Ba.

    2. Buy a mulching machine with vacuum. Then you just ride around on it (with Ba Moui Ba in hand) sucking up leaves, acorns, twigs, etc. as the machine grinds everything into mulch that you spread around the flower beds and trees, etc. Or, if you also get the blower attachment you can blow the mulch out of the machine instead of hand spreading it around – much easier.

    3. For weeding, buy a bottle of Round Up concentrated weed killer (it kills everything, including the roots of the plant), and a 2 gallon pump sprayer. Mix 1 cup of Round Up with 2 gallons of water in the sprayer, pump up the sprayer to pressurize it. Now stroll around spraying the weeds with a Ba Moui Ba in hand. Rarely, does this take more than *one* spraying per year when using Round Up – and, the only exertion is about 10 pumps of the sprayer handle to pressurize it.

    4. Hedge trimming: Buy a battery powered electric hedge trimmer. Trim the hedges before you run the mulching machine around then suck up the trimming debris as you run the mulch-er around (with Ba Moui Ba in hand).

    I suspect you’ll find this has the same effect as the Snow Blower has resulted in for you.

    Rock Onnn ….

    Bob

    PS: You might also want to get the wife *robot vacuum cleaners* for the house, so she won’t have to do all the back breaking vacuuming – PLUS, the added perk of, she won’t mind you having your *toys*, as much – LOL – 🙂

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