The first cut

Sharp edges. So proud...

Mowing the lawn. Oh yeah. This is a blog post about mowing the lawn. And if that doesn’t get the juices flowing, I will be moving on to cutting the hedge in a bit. Too good to you.

A while ago I set out my aim of making my garden self-sufficient, carbon-neutral, and part of that aim is to avoid using petrol- or electrical-based tools for the primping and preening jobs. This means using hand tools, and push tools, burning my own cake- and cheese-based energy instead of that stored away as oil and coal for billions of years. For a nice long while it was cold and nothing was growing, and it was all theory, but now plants are bursting forth irrepressibly, and I have had to swing my me-powered tools into action.

I take the push mower out of the shed; I push it and pull it about for a bit; I put it back. No wires, no expense, no use of resources, no emissions. It’s easy and satisfying and surprisingly quick. The kids, who used to hide indoors when the big mower came out, run around on the lawn while I do it (I know, health and safety nightmare. YOU try telling them.) I appreciate that it’s a bit of a token gesture: the amount of power I formerly used in my garden must be miniscule in comparison to the amount I use in the house, and the fact that I drive, occasionally. But it’s a start. It’s focusing the mind.

So the lawn is a doddle, a joy, in fact. I can’t quite believe I didn’t harness this lovely, simple technology earlier. The hedge though, is another matter. We have two BIG hedges, both privet (I know, hideous, but I can’t get rid of them because the sparrows love them). The one in the back garden is about 25 ft long, and ranges between 8 and 10ft high and I have been staring at it with increasing horror as it grows and  grows. Cutting it is one of the jobs my husband used to do with a big, heavy, stinking petrol hedge trimmer, but can’t do at the moment (I wrote about this here, if you’re puzzled), and such things take on a significance, and weigh upon me, becoming more than they are. The other problem is that there is no nifty push-mower eco-equivalent for a hedge trimmer. You get your shears, and you move your arms in and out, and then in and out some more, until all blood drains from them and giving in and just letting them drop off seems appealing.

In fact, of course, it wasnt that bad at all in the end. The shears were sharp, the job was quick. I reckon it actually took about the same time as Michael used to take over it (although this is mainly because he tends – generally, in all things – towards much higher standards than me: pushing the clippings under the hedge and calling them mulch is not his idea of clearing up after, for instance). So this is how goes my adventure with person-propelled garden machinery so far: not as daunting as it seems, much quieter, simpler, with a good feeling of taking care of business, and with that half packet of shortbread nicely worked off.