With the first dry spell in several weeks, I decided to try and mow the lawn. I have grand visions of summer soirees in our little garden and that can’t happen with the grass looking like this:
Fortunately, in the cellar is a weapon of grass destruction. Come all without, come all within, you ain’t seen nothing like the Mighty Ginge:
Should have this done in no time, the garden is diddy.
Nope. All that happened is that instead of cutting the grass, I just ended up flattening it. Look at that photo of the Ginge again. Which way would you expect to push it?
This way?
Or this way?
If you chose the latter, well done, Titchmarsh. But the other way looks right surely?? I hope that none of my neighbours were watching my clumsy attempts with the mower. I kept determinedly pushing in what I thought was the right direction, even though the blades would only turn when I pulled it backwards ('what kind of crazy mower is this?'). Eventually, the proverbial lightbulb came on and I tried turning it around. I was reminded of those Psychology videos of giving chimps a load of crates and waiting for them to work out how to reach some bananas suspended out of reach. When it is pushed in the right direction, it makes a lovely, old-style ‘whirring’ sound.
However, even when being used correctly the long grass appeared to be beyond the capabilities of the Ginge. While the odd strand did get chopped, loads more ended up wrapped and snagged around the inner workings of the mower. As this accumulates around the mechanism, the mower stops moving completely and ends up just yanking grass out of the ground. What followed were scenes that would not have looked out of place in the opening 10 minutes of an episode of ‘Casualty’: me poking my fingers around between the blades to try and remove the clogged up grass.
I may not have mowed my grass (we now have some sort of crop circle type effects) but I did realise that the term 'green fingers' probably originated from the way that grass turns your fingers green. So at least something was gained from the whole sorry affair.
7 comments:
Hmmmm, I have a feeling that you may have let your garden become a little too unkempt.
Rather like a man with a beard, who must use scissors to cut the long strands down to a more managable length before shaving with his finest cutthroat, you too must scythe your grass down before you can successfully unleash the ginge.
As far as where you might get hold of a tool as antiquated as the scythe, try the same place you got the ginge. It should be in the 17th and 18th Century aisles which are just along from the Classic Danish 1950s design aisle.
During my debut - and so far only -metal detecting trip, my best find was something that might have been a scythe (well, it was metal and scythe-shaped).
The beard analogy is spot on!
is that a dirty rusted wheelbarrow in the back right? I'd ditch that if I were you.
yes it is Munch, well spotted. It belongs to my landlady though so I should probably ask her before sticking it in skip
So you only got the expected performance from the rusty ginge when you thrusted from the rear?
A lesson for gardeners everywhere I suspect.
Are you still an uphill gardener, G Lord?
The bowel trowel is still in the shed. However it is used only in the finest of soils. Ugh... that sounds bad..
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