de spring is sprung, de grass is riz

Spring has suddenly sprung.  The path to the compost bins has become a narrow track between banks of cow parsley and hawthorn blossom, studded with bees.  An agapanthus on the greenhouse staging, that I was worried about because it was scarcely showing a leaf, and I thought I had let it get too dry over the winter, has thrown up 10cm of leaves while I've been away.  The growth of the goosegrass is prodigious, and the horsetail leaves are coming through.  The cow parsley is very pretty, and worth enjoying while it lasts, as it is a brief affair.  Bluebells have started to seed themselves under the little oak tree, which is good of them, as I should like some bluebells there.

The Systems Administrator managed to get the rotary mower over the lawns in the back garden, and the lawn tractor over the meadow.  Cutting the grass in the back garden was a slow job, and the SA's forehead was slicked with sweat by the time we'd finished.  The mower was able to pick up the clippings, which was better than I'd feared, and the SA tipped them into barrows for me to trundle away.  This cut isn't going on the compost heap, because it is full of horsetail spores and dandelion clocks, so it gets dumped in an odd corner.  It is a relief to have got it done, since the longer the grass grows, the more time, wind and sunshine it takes to dry it, and the fewer the opportunities to cut it, so the whole problem can develop into a descending spiral of increasing difficulty.

I started cutting the edges, but only got about a third of the way round, so must return to that next week.  It's forecast to be colder and showery by then.  A piece of advice often offered by professional gardeners is that if you have time to do only one thing, cut the lawn, and if you don't even have time to do that then cut the edges.  Some of our edges are 20 to 30cm long, so it isn't exactly a quick fix this time for making the garden look tidy, but the place does look much better when it's done, crisper and more cared for.  A preference for crisp and cared for is a cultural phenomenon, since in Regency times it was the fashion to leave edges uncut, in a soft and natural style.

The SA didn't try to pick up the grass while cutting in the meadow, since it would only have clogged the lawn tractor's innards, so that will need another turn with the tractor if we have some good drying weather, or a session with the rake if we don't (which seems more likely). Still, the worst of the impending grass management crisis has been averted.

The garden's headlong rush into leaf highlights those shrubs that aren't doing so well.  The leaves on the two Callicarpa bodinieri, planted as a pair from different suppliers to ensure pollination and a supply of those amazing purple berries, are puny little things, not at all reassuring.  Most of a dwarf lilac in the top garden appears to be dead.  I fear it is finding competition from the boundary hedge too much.  A self-sown wild rose nearby is completely leafless, while the hedge is flourishing.  Looking on the bright side, new growth is visible at last on the Aloysia triphylla in the Italian garden.  This is a tender shrub whose leaves are strongly scented of lemon.  I was concerned that after the two very cold nights in February I might have lost all the top growth, and that the best it might do would be to shoot from ground level, but leaves are breaking quite a long way up the stems.  Mrs Earle was very keen on Aloysia triphylla, and  advocated covering its roots with cinders in the winter for protection, which I did not do.  It is a nice thing.  I grew one in a pot for years, but it was not truly very happy, so risking one in the ground seemed worth a go.

Addendum  There is something I meant to mention before.  On 9th May Claire Lomas finished the London Marathon, after sixteen days.  She did it at a walk, wearing a bionic suit, having broken her back in a riding accident several years ago.  The organisers said that she could not have a medal after taking sixteen days, but quite a number of other people gave her theirs, and she ended up with a collection.  She was walking to raise money for research into spinal injuries, with the aim of raising fifty thousand pounds.  I thought that the walk showed extraordinary grit and determination, and that Claire Lomas seemed an extremely nice, brave and genuine person who had worked very hard to rebuild her life after catastrophic injury, when it would have been easy to disintegrate into self pity and give up, and that spinal injury was something that could happen to any of us.  She fell off a horse, but the next time each of us steps into a car could be the last time we walk unaided.  I meant to sponsor her while I was watching the news on the day, and forgot, then remembered the following evening, and saw that her fund raising total was up to £103,000, just over twice her target.  The next morning it was over £108,000, and it is now over £141,000.  Please give something if you can, and send the link to her fundraising page to your friends, and ask them to bung in a tenner, or whatever they can afford or deem appropriate.  If she can reach £200,000 that would be good, half a million even better, and a million is a nice round number.