A good day’s work

I was thinking about putting my porch light up today but quite honestly, cutting the grass is far more pressing. Since I’ve been here, I don’t think I can remember seeing it grow as quickly as it is doing right now. Grass that I cut yesterday already looks to have put nearly 2″ (5cm) of growth back on again and if I don’t keep hacking it down, by the time I’ve finished the grass that I’ve already cut will be too long again for my ride-on mower.

So I forgot about the porch light and decided that I’d get cracking on the grass at the bottom of my land all around the caravan, which was rapidly making getting to the caravan like wading through a jungle – and not very nice when it’s wet! As the space behind the caravan is fairly restricted I thought I’d start with my Black and Decker electric strimmer which is a good, solid, heavy duty model which I’ve loaded with 2.4mm nylon line. I was so impressed with its performance that I continued with it for quite a while before thinking about transferring to my old motorised ‘débroussailleuse’.

Previously I’d been using that machine with its triple metal bladed cutter because the area up at the top where they’re building now has a lot of surface stone on it which would go through the nylon line like butter. However, as the Black and Decker with its nylon line was proving so effective on plain grass and weeds where there was no stone, I thought I’d try changing over from the blade to its nylon head.

And what a change! The machine was initially a bit reluctant to start today but once it got going it ran faultlessly again and did a fine job with the nylon line ripping the grass and weeds much faster than the blade had done. It’s heavier and more unwieldy than the Black and Decker but given the length of the grass at the bottom compared to at the top, it was very satisfying to see how quickly it munched its way through it.

There’s still quite a bit left to do – at least another day’s work, probably more – but here are some shots that I took before I went off for an outdoor shower.

The final shot, below, shows how much is still left to do and also gives an idea of just how long the grass has become in what has only been a very short time.

We have another fine day forecast for tomorrow with the temperature getting up to 25 degrees C by late afternoon, so with a bit of luck I should be able to make a good dent in the grass that’s left. Unfortunately, however, they’re then forecasting thunderstorms followed by rain for much of next week – just what I need as I’ll be unable to cut it while it’s wet and the rain will encourage it to keep growing as fast as it is now… or possibly even faster 🙁