Tangoed Green!

The back lawn, in my fantasy "The Bowling Green" is looking very poor.  Scarified and raked, the moss is reduced, but the grass needs more encouragement with feeding and watering.  So first and establishing shot on the phone:

Hmm... You can see the bald bits, but the grass looks too green in the photo.  I suspect I'm the victim of Silicon Valley assuming that everyone lives in the Californian sunshine, and has corrected accordingly.  Bill Bryson described the overcast skies of Yorkshire as like living in Tupperware.  Very apt.  And that was Yorkshire - the sunny side of the watershed, not dribbly Lancashire, mild and wet as a Gogglebox commentary.  How can I show improvement in the lawn if it's already lurid green?  I want the Charles Atlas 'before' picture, first.  So here's a desaturated photo - fiddled about with until it looks convincingly like Reality, not some spray-painted Mohave desert golf course (they do that, you know.  Monty Don said so: it must be true).

That's better.  Ugh!

Speaking of 'The Don', he was on telly on Friday, telling us how to propagate cuttings.  So Genie and I set to with penknife and potting compost on Saturday, and had a go.  These are cuttings from sage, lavender and rosemary bushes, now ensconced in the greenhouse.  (It's too small to call a greenhouse. I'll name it... The Greencupboard.)

Raking the Moss out of the Moss

Fixed the 'rake' attachment to the scarifier and raked the small lawn.  More moss than grass.  The moss box on the machine is too small to be much use for a job this size.

Remembering Pippy and her love of making little heaps when raking the lawn in Hornby:

In the afternoon, Genie helped me lay some stumps as stepping 'stones' in the veg plot (trying not to disturb the onions sets just peeping out of the ground now).

Voyage of the Lawntreader

A beautiful weekend, sunny and bright.  Thunderbird 2 was looking at me meaningfully from it temporary home at the back of the kitchen.  I had words:  Once you've got all dirty, you have to live in the shed... Still it looked back at me.

First, I mowed the lawn on a fairly low setting.  This was the second cut of the year, and the grass is thick and lush, so many trips to the compost bins with grass cuttings.  Post cutting, it look tidy:

Tea break, then the scarifier.  The moss was really thick on even the most exposed part of the lawn (right of photo). The grass box (moss box?) was not picking up the er, scarifications and the motor stopped frequently - maybe there's too much moisture in the lawn.  It worked better without the grass box, but of course left the moss on the ground.  I called in reinforcements in the shape of Genie.  We spend the rest of the day scarifying, raking and carrying moss.  I was expecting the lawn to look a little battered afterwards, and so it did.  But not all the moss is out by any means.

And the compost heap:

Thunderbird 2 is now in the shed.

Scarifier

Well, I've un-boxed and assembled the scarifier. It's now awaiting better weather.  Then I'll tackle the lawn.  The main lawn area looks okay, but beyond the silver birch and the hedge there is probably more moss that grass.  I'm itching to find out. The instructions recommend waiting until April and May when the grass is more vigorous.  I'll see how long I can hold out.  Weather permitting.

So now it sits at the scruffy end of the kitchen, waiting. A hungry alligator, a Thunderbird 2 pod, a rally-tuned AC Cobra.

British

Racing

Green.

Old boy's toy

Grass

Fired up the Rotary! Just enough patrol left in the can.  High cut for the start of the season, though the grass never really stopped growing this year.  Can't say it really looks tidy yet - short and scruffy from minimal maintenance.  Scarifier next, given some dry weather.