Reclaiming the terraces

I’m just in from seven hours of mowing.  Wonderful stuff.

I hadn’t planned on doing so many areas but it is such marvelous exercise and so satisfying once you look behind you and see how tamed the terraces are.

I have been pondering why I have taken to mowing and to keeping the grass down on a few acres of these farms.  And I think the answer lies in our location. We are a wooded mountain top.

And nature takes any chance it can to return this farm to the wild.  And for wild that means self sown cherry trees, chestnut trees, ferns and brambles.

Throw in nettles because this is a landscape that has had animals kept close by for at least four hundred years.

I can’t tell you how many small tree seedlings I chop when I mow.  It would take just two seasons, I think, to return this farm from whence it came.

So I keep mowing.

I always start in the orchard as it’s close to where I keep the mower, but I actually raced straight down to the lower terraces first as they are what I see when I stand and look out the window from the house.

I only mow the first two; and the second one is still a bit tricky. Even with the rocks removed.  But I’ll do some strimming next week and that ought to sort out the nascent brambles for a few weeks.

I had a long suffering Artur following closely behind most of the day. He hates the noise of the mower, but he knows that when I stop to empty the grass catcher there’s a chance for a lap sit.   And with this long lush grass we went at a very affectionate pace.

I won’t bore you with endless shots of green. But the best bit of the day was being rained on by cherry blossom as I worked. That is my favourite kind of spring snow.