Thursday, November 17th …..

There are many things I have never owned in my life. I’ve never owned a red Ferrari, or a 40 foot yacht but I hadn’t realised until this week that I have never owned a mower. Can this be true? Apparently so.

When we built our first house in Campbelltown, I used to borrow a mower from my father-in-law. Moving to Tasmania, when we weren’t in a school house (where the school gardeners did the work), we were so busy with after-school activities and weekend sport that we employed a mowing man to keep the lawns in order, and he brought his own.

We lived only in school houses in Townville, Mittagong and Launceston until we retired, so didn’t have the responsibility of lawn mowing.

I don’t think I’ve missed much but now I am wondering if it is a requirement of Australian citizenship that every male must have a mower. It seems as ubiquitous as owning a car, but I’ve missed out.

The grass has been growing as we watch it. Having been a farm previously, the grass is a mixture of rye, lucerne, clover and other stuff, so it’s quite tall and thick – a great place for snakes so we have been forced into doing something about it. Damo would have been happy to knock it over but he charges $300 per day and I suspect we would need him every fortnight or so. So, the only reasonable alternative was to buy a mower and do it myself.

A ride-on costs thousands, so I have ended up with a quite robust motor mower with biggish wheels so I can keep the blades fairly high to accommodate the rough ground. It’s not a Victa which I could have bought on special, but looks more solid and should do the job. I had my first go at it yesterday and again today. It’s brilliant and, although the ‘lawn’ is not bowling green quality, it’s a lot better than it was. I plan to keep the grass close to the house under control, and Jamie will attack the outer ring with his whipper-snipper so, between us, we should make a difference.