A Lawnmower review - sort of

The dog likes the seaweed juice the best.

New Lawnmower Review, sort of

I bought a mower this week. I have umm’d and aah’d over buying one for weeks and did my usual extensive research before I made a decision, then went out and bought something on impulse that was on special offer!  I have been hanging my nose over a Flymo for a while as we only have a tiny lawn at the front of the house and very little grass on the back lawns due to the dogs. I fancied the hover so I could glide over the dog poo. 

I’ve ended up with a Flymo called a ‘Mow and Vac’ and alarm bells should have rung when their advertising spiel consisted of them saying that “It’s just like vacuuming the lawn”.  It’s electric and not powerful at just 900 watts, it has a single handle and not a bar to control it, just like a vacuum cleaner - and has a grass collector that when half full stops the flymo from floating , which makes it impossible to budge. I could suck more grass up through a straw than the mower does.

What do you expect?

Before I condemn the mower totally I have to point out that it’s the first cheap mower I have bought and as Julie says, what do I expect for €50? I am accused of living in the 1970’s when it comes to money but I still expect something that says it cuts grass to do just that.  The last mower I used cost nearly 1000 euro so my standards are high.  I battled with the Flymo for a while, mumbling about taking it back to the shops and then all of a sudden I adapted to its ways; I relaxed and let it do its thing. Firstly I took off the silly collector which lifted the mower higher and then put it back on again to “sweep up”  OK it’s got plastic brackets to hold the handles in place, the blades are plastic too. But it’s quiet, and actually does do the job. Before I was using my large strimmer and because I find it a pain to fill it with petrol, put on the safety gear then spend 2 hours washing the walls of mud and grass splatters, I didn’t do it very often.  This mower is set up in a minute and clean and tidy, with no safety equipment needed. In fact it’s just like a vacuum cleaner for the garden. They ought to use that as a slogan.

Plant Tonic

The place where we get our well rotted manure has disappeared, well not disappeared exactly but the supply has been buried under a new cycle path and the horses have moved on to pastures new. I don’t know where but hopeful when I see them again it won’t be in a sandwich. Because of the loss of supply I am being inventive and playing with different solutions. I have three buckets, one with seaweed in, one with comfrey and the last one with nettles. They have been steeping in stagnant water for about three weeks now and are getting to the stage where the neighbours are asking if our drains are blocked so something’s working.  I’m going to put the liquid into plastic milk cartons then feeding the watered down solution to different plants and see which perform the best...science! I think the best solution will be the three mixed together and that’s probably what’s going to happen.  The dog likes licking the seaweed one the best for some reason, he must be deficient in salt.

Latest Creation

My latest hanging basket has been created on a budget. After the shock of spending money on the mower I couldn’t stretch to a basket liner so made one up myself.  I have a lot of ferns in the garden and seeing as they grow quickly I thought their leaves would make a good substitute for sphagnum moss. The basket looked great when I had made it up. I got a great deal at the DIY place last week when the weather was bad, they decided to sell the geraniums off really cheaply, so I crammed in three of those along with nasturtiums, sweet peas and creeping Jenny’s. Three days later and the basket looks like I haven’t watered it all summer. The ferns have gone brown and crispy and the plants haven’t had time to establish. Maybe I should have used an old dustbin liner bag. I’m sure it’ll look great when the plants grow over the top of the basket, until then it can be a constant reminder that it’s sometimes a good thing to part with a bit of money occasionally.