Gardening

Our expanse of field has now been sown out in grass seed for a lawn.

It was ploughed a few weeks ago, and didnt look all that beautiful with a lot of matted field grass showing even with the ploughing.

Last Saturday morning I hired a garden rotavator and set to work - a tough job with a ploughed field on a hill. Anyhow, I toiled for about 2 hours pulling up I would estimate around a googol of stones. At 10:30 it was time to do a 2-hour shift at the flower festival at church, so I went there.

On the way back I called with Mr Farmer who I had asked to come and help with his proper tools, so he told me he would be there later in the afternoon. It was a fantastic day, sunny all day, and roasting. I did a bit more with the rotavator, and then waited on the tractor arriving.

When the tractor started with the power harrow (or par-harra as we say here ;) it was amazing. In went poor quality, aweful looking soil, and out came beautiful, well worked soil!

After another googol of stones were lifted, and a bit of harrowing the ground was looking great.

On Monday when I returned from work at 5pm I went straight to the garden. My Father-in-law had been there during the day with the tractor and land-leveller which had removed the humps and hollows. All that remained to be done was raking the small stones away.

Raking took a few hours, and about 9pm we were ready to sow the grass seed. After sowing it needed another rake to cover the seed in soil, and again this seemed to take ages.

About 10:30pm it was raked and ready to be rolled. I managed to hook the garden roller up behind the lawnmower, and got about 1/2 of it rolled before giving up due to darkness and mechanical failure (of the hitch for the roller, leaving the comical scenario of me running down the hill after the runaway roller 8- )

Just before midnight I stopped. Job *almost* well done.