The triple whammy

Hay fever, a head cold and verbascum pollen. Just what I didn’t need.

But it made mowing today very sporting.  Add in ant bites up my right leg and you have a rather grumpy gardener.

But once the acres are mown, it is so pleasing. Even if I finished after 830pm tonight.

The usual route: start in the orchard, work up the track, mow all the grass in the duck pond area (good for the abdomen muscles as it’s on a slope) then move on to the two sides of lawn around the pool.

Pause for a visit from the electrician, then back to the area in front of the house and contemplate the east garden and walnut track, but actually fall onto the sofa during the heat of the day to watch the cycling and change the endless handkerchiefs. 

Back out in the late afternoon to mow all the verges down the road, and then to the lower terraces.

I hadn’t planned on mowing any of the lower terraces, although I was keen to harvest the mulch.

But the mower just seems to turn down the steep track on its own.

I only mowed one terrace. I had thought it was fine for the summer; but there were brambles and verbascusm and thistles galore right in the middle of the sward.

So up went the blade so I would miss all the low growing thyme plants and off went the bramble heads.

But what did I spy out of the corner of my eye on the terrace above? Verbascums about to flower. Ugh.

No more mowing for half an hour while I hunted down each and every plant about to launch into life among the wildflowers.

I was musing that you have to really love all your land to want to spend such a hot time of the day grubbing about for plants.  But it’s worth it.

And why you may ask? Apart from the fact I’m allergic to them? Have a look at this shot from summer 2008.  One year after we bought our farm. A plant out of control.  And they throw up such a thick flower spike (covered in millions of fluffy bits of pollen attached to the spike that gets down your throat and makes you cough your guts up) that you can only cut them down with loppers. Each and every one.

A pioneer plant. But one I am controlling very laboriously each and every year.

And I am grateful that my mother worked so hard to dug up the verbascums on the first terrace.  That one long 100 metre part of the farm is verbascum free.