Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

The Battle of the Grass

I have been wrestling with two old and failing lawn mowers to cut our grass for a while now, one an ancient hover mower, and an equally old more expensive mower. Depending on the length of the grass, one or the other works reasonably well if the grass in question was a little more user friendly.

Our garden is not large, but very long, with a centre flower bed, giving me two areas of lawn to mow. The area nearest the house is dry, prone to weeds, moss and is slow growing.

The furthest patch is totally different, vigorous, and permanently damp. At the moment, it is almost as high as an elephant’s eye. (a mild exaggeration!) There isn’t a mower in the land that could cut grass that long!

As usual on most grass cutting days, I ran out of steam after tackling the first half and had to postpone the second bit. Consequently, cutting the grass became my least favourite garden job, especially now that my age and the age of the mowers is increasing.

Of course, the weather doesn’t help, for when I am in the mood to do battle again, it’s either raining, or the grass is soaking wet.

I have been meaning to sort this problem out for a while, so I began looking for a reliable and simple push mower. I found one that I could afford, but before I could get excited, I had to find a way to reduce the length of the longer grass. It was higher than my knees, and there’s no mower in the land that could cut that!

Out came the dreaded strimmer. You may remember my first encounter with this deadly weapon last year, when it neatly sliced the nail off my big toe. To be fair, I was wearing flip flops at the time!

This time, I will be wearing some heavy duty gardening shoes, so my toes should be safe.

Twenty four hours later, I had expertly, even if I do say so, reduced the length to one that my new mower could cut…

Grass cutting problem? Not any more…