Today I mowed the lawn, so that's what that expanse of green is celebrating. Since moving to this smaller property almost eight years ago, I've been paying someone else to mow and trim the lawn. But a few months ago, I decided I would try and do it myself. After all, I'd bought a battery-operated mower when I moved here but have rarely used it. For the first five or six years that made sense, as I was lucky to have resumed work as a consultant and was overseas for some months of each year. But I called a halt on work just before Covid - if I hadn't, Covid would have done it for me since Australia closed up tightly for more than a year. And even now, overseas travel is not as easy or carefree as it used to be. So really, there's no reason why I shouldn't care for the grass myself, since I'm caring for the rest of the garden. It's good exercise, it's better for my budget, and it prevents someone bringing in weed seeds and other things with their equipment.
It's Spring here, however. It was autumn when I made the decision to take care of the lawn myself. Over autumn and winter, even though this is a subtropical climate, grass doesn't grow too fast. But as the weather warms up, the grass grows faster. Soon it will need to be cut at least once a fortnight and the weather will be too hot to do that for much of the day - for me, at least. So either I will have to start getting up earlier, or resign myself to mowing late in the afternoon, when I'd prefer to be sitting down with a whisky! So we shall see.
For the moment, anyway, I'm managing it pretty well. But I don't have a whipper-snipper for trimming the edges. And I don't dare to buy one because I think I'd be too likely to do myself damage in trying to use it. I can ask my son-in-law to bring his whipper-snipper along the next time they come for a weekend visit - and he might do some trimming for me (as long as we agree he can go fishing the rest of the weekend!) Until then I will just have to do a bit of selective trimming by hand.
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