Not (pace Rod Stewart) the deepest, and not the shortest either, but today saw the first outing of 2015 for my mower. It’s always a slightly worrying thing this first mowing business. Leave it too late, and the grass has already started to get away from you; but jump the gun, and it’s likely to be too wet or cold, and the result won’t be good. There’s also the inescapable fact that, once you’ve started mowing you are going to be repeating the exercise every week or so until late October in any normal year. It’s like leaping aboard a treadmill, and as such not something you want to do lightly.

Today, however, a bright, warm, sunny day seemed like the perfect opportunity to take just a wee clip off the top of the grass at The Farm. The blades were set at their highest, and so the volume of grass removed and composted was pretty small. But the effect was good – the tuftiest tufts of coarse grass were brought into line, and – if you don’t look too closely – the lawns around the houses look pretty good. 

There is a lot of moss, though, and overall the quality of the grass is patchy (quite literally so). It will take some time to get it up to par, and I have already started preparing some areas for reseeding. Whether the resident doves will give the new seed a chance, when it goes down, remains to be seen.

I didn’t tackle the ‘grounds’ grass, as I was using my smaller roller-mower – they will need the 4-wheeler with a bit more oomph, a bigger grass-box, and self-propulsion. That’s one of Friday’s jobs all being well.