I was reading the post about automatic mowers with a degree of interest and recall a recent article that they are or have been banned in Germany (I think?) for use in the night because of the carnage they cause with hedgehogs and the general carnage they cause with wildlife.
I came to the conclusion that I would never want a classic lawn because it sounds like a complete faff to keep up.
So, one of the real joys of owning ancient meadowland is that this time of year, you get so much flora and fauna and the activity carries on until early summer when I get out with a bush cutter and hand cut (quite low) the vegetation leaving some areas uncut too. The seeds are then trampled back into the ground sort of simulating cows in a meadow. The second lighter cut is in the autumn.
We have loads of wonderful mammals aerating the ground and burrowing bees and pots of gold under rainbows and so on.
No need for any fertilizer or chemicals…the ground has to be kept quite poor in nutrients.
I took these early this morning and the colours a wonderful (sorry about poor quality).
Back in the day, cutting this back would have been by hand.
I do not have large expanses of grassland but what ‘weeds’ I have in the garden I resist cutting while the wildflowers abound, mainly dandelions and cowslips. The glorious daffodils are gone now but they are safely in the rockery around the bottom pond and the middle one has an intense patch of bluebells. Up near the top, swimming, pond one side is a bank full of bluebells and a few cowslips.
Further up, in the ‘new forest’, the plot I bought last year, it is wonderfully spaced high trees, often a scene of me lounging and watching. I will soon run the mower in between, avoiding the odd flowers but concentrating on the grass and bramble shoots. Before I bought it the latter were solid throughout apart from a single track that got us to the wider forest and meadow beyond. That forest has several large circular plots of wonderful bluebells, I have long avoided walking through them and Jules, blissfully unaware, ploughs straight on and through, but his feet are tiny compared to mine and I rarely see a casualty.
When we enter first one and then the other meadow is where the colour really starts. The man who has the rights to cut the grass never does so 'till June, the last in the valley to do so, much to my irritation because I can get soaked to the waist on an early walk but I do appreciate when I see, as now. the wide expanse of yellow and deep purple, so much so that I have to tread very carefully in the thickest parts.
Another beautiful day I see outside, one tree has shed its blossom but its neighbour in the frame is a mass of white blossom, time for us very soon to set off again and I guarantee that the return will be slower as I halt just in side the gate to relax on the lounger or single chair and gaze up at the treetops in gentle motion.
Lovely, perhaps I should put up a little sign up there which says ‘Komorebi Korner’
BTW, That first picture is very similar to the ancient sunken chemin rurale which marks the northern boundary of my new forest.
BTW again. I have said elsewhere that I do not believe in an after life so can’t say that I will miss this when I’m gone. But in the few moments between life and death, if I am granted some, I will miss it for that instant. Which is why I also said I could easily be buried there. What if I was wrong, and there is life after death, and what if the Mairie had relented and allowed me to remain there? Can you imagine the joy on the realisation of that?
I agree. They are a menace. I have a mate with one, and It always goes runabout and gets lost, Dog knows where! Doing all that damage you sescribe. It would be hard for me to use one in my terrain! I live in the hills of South Aveyron.
Just athought - aren’t ‘weedss’ just flowers in the wrong place !!! Love France at this time of year - if the verges aren’t cut too much just look at the wild orchids growing; and all the other wonderful ‘flowers’ and shrubs - sheer delight.
I live in the hills of South Aveyron.