The Garden – Tending the Lawn

Now, in front of the veg patch is a lawn.  And you’d think that a lawn would be pretty easy to look after.  But not ours.

The Lawn - A Growing Problem
The Lawn - A Growing Problem

Actually, it’s probably not just our lawn’s fault, it’s a combination of the weather and our lifestyle.  You see, lawns don’t just need attention, they need it at very specific times. This has been a real problem lately.  I’ve needed a couple of dry days for it to dry out before mowing, then I need to treat it (it’s the only thing we use chemicals on, and it needs it), then I need some rain to water in the treatment.

We’ve not even had the couple of dry days lately!  So it got quite long, which meant it takes longer to dry and takes more effort to cut.

But cutting it’s not the only problem.  See, we have creeping weeds and they’re creeping, increasingly, into the centre of the lawn area.  Normally we’d dig the cinquefoil up by the roots, but you can’t do that in the lawn!

It creeps and it creeps
It creeps and it creeps

And then there’s the ants, which make big grassless lumps in the middle of the lawn, and then they make more ants.  And then there’s bindweed, which is starting to creep in amongst the creeping cinqefoil.

And then, just when I do get to do the mowing, what’s creeping amoungst the longer grasses but a slow worm.  A protected, legless lizard that lives for up to 50 years!  And so I chopped half through it with the strimmer.

Yeah, having a lawn isn’t so easy sometimes.