Unmitigated Lawn Disaster....

un·mit·i·gat·ed/ˌənˈmitəˌgātid/

Adjective: Absolute; unqualified.

The lawn here has always bothered me. As much as it played a huge part in my falling in love with the place when we were inspecting, despite it's smallish stature, it's always been an area for concern. As mentioned in my previous blogs, it has taunted me since we moved in. It's perfect manicured edges were never going to be replicated under my watch. I knew that and the lawn knew that......but not even I could foresee the levels of despair this lawn has thrust upon me. My girlfriend accuses me of now being obsessed with lawn and especially other peoples' lawn. Admittedly, on our morning walk this morning she suddenly noticed that I was no longer walking beside her. She stopped turned around and found me standing in the street staring over a fence muttering a mantra 'How do they do that? How do keep it like that? How?' True story.

This is an example of what it used to look like. A 'Before' if you will.

Initially I was only concerned about the odd brownish patch that had started to appear throughout my smallish lawn...then the clover popped up...still no problem. Dad said this was quite normal for a lawn heading into winter. And so the time came that I realized I had to mow it. Again, no great problem...been there and down that path as an 11 Year old using Dad's two stroke mower. Actually I am amazed that I still have all my toes. I rarely put too much concentration into the activity. But still the weapon of choice I have inherited is a push mower. It really does look like it is from the 1950s. I was going to post a photo of it on here but the thought of going downstairs to wrestle the thing out of the cupboard it lives in diminished my enthusiasm. This particular mower doesn't start to cut the grass till after a metre or so of pushing. Problem with me is that I really only have a few metres across to mow so by the time the blades are up to speed I am half way across the lawn. An issue I am willing to work with. The run up technique really only works from the garden path side. If I try it on any of the other sides I must start at least a metre in the garden. That could work but the majority of the garden on those sides is dotted with well placed rose bushes so there is no where I can sneak in with out getting attacked by thorns. I am sure this garden is just messing with me. Everyday I step into it, it finds another way to defeat me, or at the very least humiliate me. That is where the impetus of this blog came from initially. I spent so much time swearing at certain plants / lawn / mower / hoses at different times I thought that no one would ever believe how much shit this garden actually gives me....And so here I am...It continues to taunt me. Even during something as simple as watering the garden on the way out to work. I will run the hose out put the sprinkler on the end and turn on the water. Simple right? Well as I walk forward the hose gets jagged, instantly tightening around my leg spinning me off balance and into the nearest bush. Annoyed I stomp back to the tap to turn it off so I can sort the twisted hose out and the bloody tap connection right at the moment of me standing there pops off dowsing me in water....so before I go to work I have to go upstairs and change. Seriously this garden has it in for me. 


The first mow goes ok. The edges are a bit sprouty (that word sounded fine in my head but unconvinced it translates to the page) and the random directions I was forced to manoeuvre the beast in means that there is no natural flow to the tracks of the mower. Again, I can live with that. I knew I would never reach those same awesome heights of the obvious lawn queen who owns the house so I had not so far to fall. I was a little disappointed. A little part of me had hoped that upon cutting the little blades would appreciate the gesture to such a degree that they would just naturally line themselves up and the lawn would maintain it's uniform and beautifully cultured manner. Sadly that did not happen. But a good first effort I believe.

I should cut to the chase. No pun intended. I mean I doubt anyone should persist this far into a story about cutting a lawn. I know I wouldn't and I commend anyone other then my Mum, my sister and my girlfriend who makes it this far. You are either incredibly bored OR really care about lawn. Either way, thanks for hanging in there.

I had left the lawn whilst away. So by the time I got back from an OS wedding and holiday to two countries who really know how to do a lawn (Tuscany, Italy and Dublin, Ireland) I was forced to confront my own. Even then I didn't address it straight away. I waited. And eventually it started raining. Oops. Should have mowed when it wasn't raining. It rained and rained from Wednesday to Saturday morning. Saturday, however started to fine up and by 10am I could see that this might be my only chance to get in and cut the now quite high lawn. It was I must say looking quite healthy, if only unkempt and a tad overgrown (not dissimilar to my own head). Roll your eyes now but HOW was I supposed to know that you should never ever mow a lawn right after it has been raining? The first thing I noticed was that the clippings due to the wetness of lawn stuck together and instead of being thrown back into the attached catcher, flew forward and covered anything in front of the mower in a blanket of wet green clippings. There are still plants in the garden that have the odd clipping stuck to their leaves. Not to mention the path. As if that wasn't bad enough it was too late when I noticed that the wheels were indenting the grass and leaving large tracks through the wet mess that had until several minutes ago been a lawn. This was like a annoyance delay technique as I was forced to watch over the following week whilst this grass began to stand back up creating lines of uncut grass. Yet another way for the grass to get at me. To add insult to injury, the colour of the newly cut grass was a yellow brown. Almost like I had peeled away the nice green blades and exposed the rotting mess of grass that hasn't seen the sun in a while. I was horrified, and pissed off. How could this grass do this to me. In fits of absolute disgust I finished the remainder of the lawn, hosed off the beast and hid it back in the cupboard. I pulled out the shears and started trimming the edges of a lawn that now resembled a three year old's dolls head once the hair has been cut of with nail scissors. It had become ridiculous. The only thing to be done was to hide the evidence and hope that a couple of dry days restored the lawn to something semi presentable. It didn't. The major damage done on that day was my own footprints. The exasperated steps I took to inspect the total damage done on that fated day have actually remained and the grass has failed to restore itself. This is not the end. This is the beginning.

And after my handiwork this is the current state.