First Cut

This evening, in the last of the light, I managed to cut the lawn. Just the games lawn, and round the pond, that is. On the horizon, now, is the time when that will be almost all the grass there is that needs regular cutting: the top lawn has already started its transition to herb and rose garden; the spectrum garden, once the beds and patio are taken out, has only paths to mow; the copse has started to take shape, and that only leaves a small bit at the bottom of the access ramp, and the aforementioned games lawn and pond garden.

Last year was not a good one for lawn mowing. The last cut of the year, at the start of September, was long over due, but there hadn't been any chance to mow for nearly two months. That's 224 days ago, for those of us keeping track, which does, admittedly mean that I've had three fifths of a year off from this far-from-favourite job.

The lawn wasn't actually in bad shape. It's marginally earlier (a week) than I managed the first cut last year, 24th April, and a bit later than 2011 (20th March). Meticulous record keeping belies the fact that I'm an awful groundsman, but having that much less to mow might mean I get better at fitting it in. Tonight's work only took about 85 minutes, which is entirely manageable in an evening. Before we started reducing the lawns, it was a three hour job—and not a pleasant one. The cold winter has meant that the grass hasn't grown particularly, so this trim only yielded a (pretty full, I concede) barrow of clippings—the first trim of 2012 left me with a compost bay full.

Inevitably, the lawn will look a little yellow tomorrow, and we've had a number of mole-hills in the last month, so it won't look fantastic. I've long promised myself that when I only have a 'small' lawn to maintain, I'll do things like rolling, levelling, feeding, and striping. I might not be far off, which means I might need to start thinking about renovating that petrol cylinder mower that's languishing in the garage.

The spring bulbs are doing really nicely. There's a very eye-catching crocus that's come up in the copse, called 'Ard Schenk': white, and multi-headed. There are also some unexpectedly attractive chionodoxa: they came as part of a pack, and we'd kind of forgotten we'd planted them. The other blue chionodoxa under the berberis at the far end of the top bank (near the oil tank) are also looking pretty. They only emerged when we removed the overgrown shrubs from the top bank, and have been a delight for the last couple of springs.

Chionodoxa (© Ian 2013)