The Shear joy of gardening

Some may have been strenuously and heroically running the London marathon today while others (Melanie and I) had their own marathons to embark on in the form of mowing what felt like the world’s longest lawn (and pretty long grass to go with it). First things first - testing the equipment kindly supplied by Mrs. W, we discovered we had a working lawn mower and a just-about-working shears. Following Melanie giving me (first time mower) a great lesson in lawn mowing, it was straight to work in the Sunday sunshine.

After a few practice runs on the mower I picked up pace while Melanie did some rather tricky edge trimming with a not so sharp shears. As the grass was very long it took us a while to feel like progress was being made. We took it in turns with the mowing and shearing – both equally tricky, a teamwork effort to avoid hitting the mowing "wall" marathon mowers often encounter a few hours in.

A friendly neighbour even offered her own shears to help out and provided tips and demo in shearing techniques.

To cut the primroses or not to cut the primroses – that was the question of the day, where wild primroses were growing in the lawn. We decided to keep them due to their prettiness and carefully mowed and cut around them.

Two and a half hours and 6 bin bags full of grass later, we could finally relax with a drink of our choice made by Mrs. W.

Mrs. W was impressed with the results, although did request we remove the primroses in the lawn that we had been carefully avoiding and working around. Once we had trimmed the flowers she was very happy with the results and it was nice to see the difference our hard work had made.

It was a really fun day and really quite a workout. Thanks Melanie for making my first mission such an enjoyable one!