Mallard Lodge

Mowing lawns is fun - except when it rains - intermittently. I was in and out of the back doors today like a man in a weather house, frantically using the patio table as a temporary cover for the electric mower. I use the electric mower for the little enclosed back garden. Apart from the dog patches, little patches of scorched grass caused by too much nitrogen due to the habitual weeing of bitches in the same place, there is another problem with fine grasses and dogs. Compression. If you leave mowing the lawn for a few weeks, the grass becomes compressed by dogs lying in the sun and walking. Unless you use the lowest setting on the mower, the grass is never cut but contunues to get more and more compressed and dies leaving a less from green appearance. I tried to sort this out today by mowing lower to the ground and yes, you guessed it, the grass was so tough and matted, the result was a heavily chewed appearence.

That does it. I'm growing clover - EVERYWHERE. Roll on the spring!

Need to go shopping in a few hours and hopefully to the cinema later so I'd really better get on with the hoeing. The plan was to hoe the entire border around the main lawn as well as the bit by the kitchen (which I'm planning in the spring to convert to a cottage garden with a lot of colourful annuals) - however the rain is intermittent and the ground a bit mucky so I may only do a fraction of what I wanted.

Oh - and by the way, the vegetable seeds that I sowed the other day in the greenhouse - they've started to germinate ALREADY!! It's all happening here at Mallard Lodge!