I Fought The Lawn

And the lawn won.
Well it nearly did, until I got the mower out.

Yes, the first mowing of the season. I use a push mower, no electrics or petrol, saves a fortune on gym membership too. It only takes me ten minutes to mow the lawn, it would take that long to untangle the cable of an electric mower. If you remember the push mowers of old, my dad had one, it was built like a tank; well today's models are really lightweight. I mean, even I can use one.

And then I fed the lawn. I know, all that effort to cut the grass, and then I feed it to make it grow again. Ah well, there is a method in my madness. I use a product called Lawn Magic, often used on football pitches and bowling greens. Basically, it makes the grass grow stronger roots. It also makes the weeds grow. No really, that's a good thing, because you know how lawn weeds hug the ground so the mower misses them, well now they reach for the sky, or to be more precise, my lawn weeder's prongs.

And this is Clematis armandii, now in full bloom. I purchased it a few years ago and planted it in dense shade, to climb up a berberis. To be honest, I didn't think it would survive, but survive it did, and just grew and grew. The first year it clambered up the berberis as it was supposed to do. The following year it climbed up into the hawthorn tree until a gust of wind blew it down. And this year it jumped over the hedge onto my neighbour's lilac tree, where it is flowering its socks off. After flowering, I will be giving it a drastic prune to keep it under control.

The blue tits haven't booked the removal van just yet. They're still just taking small bits of furniture into the nestbox. In fact, one of them had a very close call with a sparrowhawk on one of the feeders. Fortunately, it doesn't seem bothered by the incident, and is continuing to use the feeder as normal. That little bird is far braver than I.