It’s that sort of grass!

 

My neighbour’s garden is mostly grass or mostly nettles but every year the grass is mown. We generally do it together as the first cut is so very exhausting.

I start at the bottom and meander through islands where tulips grow amongst wild geranium, buttercups and dandelions.

The buttercups put up the least resistance and fall in soft supplication as I mow over them, but they make me feel mean and cruel. The dandelions put up more of a fight, whilst the wild geranium create a summery stink as they are cut down to their stems. But the grass is savage. Every blade is a sword and it fights for its right to grow tall and reach for the sun. It side-steps, parries, ducks and thrusts; so I have to make first one cross and then another and another changing directions in order to spring my attack. It clusters in thick clumps and hides twigs amidst its centres with which it clubs my blades so I have to bring in a replacement. It is thick and damp and resistant.

My neighbour, who is in her seventies, limps off the battlefield field wounded. She can hardly breathe and needs her inhaler the other tactic the grass uses in its defence a secret gas attack.

We talk about the grass. It was stolen from the grass used to seed the nearby racecourse. Perhaps not stolen, but left over, so to speak. The sort of grass to endure the gallop of metalled hooves and to cushion them should they fall. The sort of grass over which  hanged criminals  on the gibbet there once dangled their legs. It’s that sort of grass!

I leave a tuft for her to finish, like leaving a child the last piece in a jigsaw and she does so with a glorious flourish.

A small blue butterfly flying low is our reward.