Take a long time and have a baby, "my grandpa used to say in his strange Alemannic at the end of the summer.

And of course he was right.

It's really not long until Christmas.

The time from the beginning of autumn to the end of the year races so fast - almost like a bobsledder down the ice rink.

The problem is: You get to the bottom quickly, but then the dark and cold season stretches out endlessly.

Andreas Frey

Freelance writer in the science of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Oh, now I'm already talking like my grandpa. Last week there was another summer look-up here in the southwest. The sun is no longer burning, it is warming, and pleasant days are possible until November. In addition, autumn is the most beautiful time of the year for many gardeners anyway, because the effort and toil during the year is finally rewarded: the harvest is coming. In any case, the happiness of gardening seems limitless. House and allotment gardens have become an increasingly popular retreat since Corona, a new survey by the University of Geisenheim confirmed; the first survey took place during the first lockdown in spring 2020.

The importance of gardens has increased since the beginning of the corona pandemic.

Those who have one stated in the study that the garden has become more important compared to before.

And those who do not have a green grid square increasingly want such free space for sowing and mowing.

The nice side effect of the drudgery is that gardeners spend more than twice as long outdoors than non-gardeners, and they are more satisfied with their lives.

However, the study authors are now asking themselves: Will the importance of the gardens decrease again after Corona?

On eight nimble legs

In any case, I have completely lost my pleasure in gardening. The young neighbor cat has been emptying its intestines for some time and with high frequency on lawns and beds, and this late summer a large angle spider (

Eratigena atrica

) crawled up my leg, which, as a gardener with arachnophobia - embarrassing, I know - a huge horror chased in. When I read a study by the TU Braunschweig the next day, my understanding of critters was over. Accordingly, private gardens are a paradise for ticks; Parasitologists found the common wood

tick

(

Ixodes ricinus

).

This fits in with the increase in cases of early summer meningoencephalitis in the past year: more time in the garden - more tick bites in which the viruses can be transmitted.

To be honest, the critters are just an excuse to cover up the real reason for my temporary abstinence from gardening: 2021 was a year of failure.

Oh well, the balance sheet shows a complete horticultural failure.

My sunflowers buckled and barely came up, the little vegetables were puny, the tomatoes a disaster.

Everything I sowed was soon gone or turned to mud.

Even the lawn did not want to grow properly that summer and soon had holes - best regards to the neighboring child, who always played football on it in the summer rain.

And now?

I rely on a horticultural principle that I praised elsewhere: Disorder is a virtue, at least in nature - and now in the garden too.

I leave the community of plants and animals to their own devices, naturalization is the order of the day.

Just let it go - that goes well with election Sunday, as some old party campaigns for their voters.

And as for the garden: I'll be back by New Years at the latest, you know me.