Let The Mowing Begin

I got started on hand mowing the sunny utility meadow and all the under lush that constitutes the wild cultivated gardens. There was a dry hole in the pea soup diagnosis of the next several days. No sense in letting it go to waste. Winter is bound to arrive at some point.

Can you believe there are actual baby shrubberies in the garden to be that become more noticeable when the under lush gets cut down.



I left the grasses for now. It will be a while before things start to turn green and some textural interest will be welcome.



I started yesterday actually and in two days I have made my way all the way over to the chimney on the far side of the sunny utility meadow. I am cutting all the dried dead stalks of the perennial wildflowers with a pair of manual hedge clippers. This particular pair has extendable handles making my reach longer and eliminating the need to stoop the whole time. That makes the task a bit less tiring.

The weed whacker is too noisy and the dried dead stalks too woody for it to be the tool of choice. Besides I enjoy the silence.



Even the old homestead becomes more visible once the five foot tall tangle of dried dead stalks is laid on the ground.



A few logs and rocks were moved in today's proceedings. Two long logs and many log sections that had been left in the meadow from the utility company's major chop four and a half years ago were moved to the perimeter of the meadow with the other rubbish piles that still remain from that long ago butchering.

I put a bunch of rocks in the hole right beside the path that Helen Yoest stepped in up to her knee when she came to visit. That freaked me out just a bit. The thing is the stream is under there. It is really a loose collection of huge boulders covered by copious amounts of the former lush. The stream itself is not stable below. It moves from side to side depending on the flow, filling things in and digging things out. This part of the path is always changing.



Why you might ask would I hand mow several acres of the dead dried stalks of perennials that are the lush of summer. Well I like a nice clean slate for spring. It makes the thousands and thousands of bulbs that will emerge from the ground more visible and more enjoyable. The returning lush won't need to grow so long before all the brown disappears and contact with the wet ground will speed up the decomposition of all the debris. At least I am not crazy enough to rake it all up and haul it away. Chop and drop will suffice.



This is supposed to be a garden after all, even if it is a wild one.