Knee-High

It's been absolutely ages since I last mowed the lawn, as I've never had a coincidence of the time and the weather to do so. The grass has, therefore, looked awful, but there's been little I could do about it. So, today, we tackled it, as it's been dry since last Friday. A horrible job, that's taken almost the entire day (well, you try mowing half an acre of lawn that's been left two months, with a Flymo), and completely filled a compost bin with clippings.

Fortunately, I spent a while yesterday turning the compost, and now have a bay of ready compost, a bay of 'nearly' compost, and, now, a bay of grass clippings, mixed with stable muck from next door's horse.

The lawn looks immeasurably improved, though it will look a different kind of terrible tomorrow, as it's had such a proportionately severe clip.

We popped out in the middle of the day, including taking a load of scrap metal (including corrugated iron dug out when planting the fruit trees, two old bike frames, and the old TV aerial) away. That generated the princely sum of £8, which will at least buy a few plants. While we were out, we checked the damson that gave us a foraged bonus last autumn, but sadly it's bare. No surprise: none of our cherries or plums have any fruit this year, and we've only one apple (no pears or quinces), and there're only about four apples on the hillside. The one exception is our ornamental/edible dwarf cherry, the exact name of which escapes me. That had its best year yet, with several dozen (tiny) fruit. Very tasty, but each one's the size of a blueberry, with a 3–4mm stone, so not that substantial!