Cutting back grasses in spring

Happy now. I’m back.

And excuse me while I type with nine fingers, not ten. There’s a blister on one.

Today’s job – after greeting Artur and serving coffee to Bebere and Etienne on the scaffolding – was to cut back the grasses.

Glorious spring weather, sharp secateurs, and two huge banks of grass to tackle. What could be better?

I use mainly eragrostis curvula grass here. African love grass. Quite a noxious weed elsewhere. But our cold winters keep it in check.

All it needs is to be cut back every spring.

The only playful thing is I think I have about an acre of the stuff. It grows brilliantly.  And each tiny grass I transplanted seems to have grown to the size of … of a very large fat grass. Sorry, my brain is fried.

There’s also the fun thing of what to do with all the cutting material.  I am thinking of putting it up at the top potager and using it as a mulch between the potatoes I intend to plant. When I get round to buying them.

I may be too late – the Charlottes might have all been snapped up.

But this is not about potatoes. It’s about perching nice and precariously on a very steep slope and cutting and cutting and cutting the grass.

And then twisting it all up and trying to fling it either above my head to the terrace above, or down towards the pool.

Every now and then I would miss my aim spectacularly and have a heap of dry grass fall on my head.  But it did break up the day’s relentless cutting.

I also landed on a lot of chestnut burrs, and brambles hidden between the clumps.

I’d show you a ‘how marvellous am I?’ I’ve almost done the pool bank. But I didn’t finish until it was almost dark.  So tomorrow morning I will twinkle out and take some snaps.  And work out how to carry a huge pile of grasses up to the very top of the farm.

Trying to squeeze past Etienne and Beb and the scaffolding tower on the way. (And yes, you can see they managed NOT to damage the box balls when they put up the tower.  That was because they had garden nazi standing by and looking fierce while they worked. )