On Mowing

When I was way into horticulture I read all the great classic garden writers and they frequently titled their articles names like "On Conifers" or "On Groundcovers"....so today , as it was my third straight day of mowing...and I was pondering many aspects of mowing, I kept returning to the terms, "On Mowing".

(Side note: Remember SNL's skit about "On Golden Pond, it was titled "On Goldie Hawn")

Now, needless to say, i would not have been mowing atall, except that....my Hardwood Dr neighbor did not end up mowing my Lagoon house grounds. He did come over for a social visit ( I think he was scoping out the size of the project), and once he saw, he didn't bring up the subject of mowing ! I kept waiting !

So that left me with no alternative but to call a lawn service or get some exercise , which I really need, and do it myself....which I decided to do. There is a big, fast rider lawnmower here, but I am not going to use it myself until my bro comes back down and goes over the operation of it with me, in person. And that is when the phrase "Less is More " kept popping into my head. As in, less grass to mow is more betta. By the second day, pushing the nice red Honda push mower, I figured that not only was it time for "Less is More" but also it was time for adding the element of fun and creativity. That was when I decided to do lawn grass relief sculpture.

I have laid out patterns on both sides of the driveway that I will not mow. I picked areas that have nice dense St. Augustine coverage and obnoxious weeds are less likely to invade. I plan to scratch some wildflower seeds into any bare spots I see, things that I see growing already down here on the roadside. From all my years of studying plants , I am pretty familiar with most of the good/bad so-called wild flowers native/exotic, etc....and kinda know what to add to the meadow like effect that will result (I hope).

Originally there were wild , native ground orchids growing under the pines here but they got mowed as the grass got mowed and they disappeared. Maybe they will return.

On the right hand side of the driveway I have left very rectangular forms of unmowed areas. On the left hand side the unmowed part is a much more organic shape that encompasses the remaining tree and a dead tree trunk. Anyone who knows anything about this place, knows that we lost all our privacy hedge row in Hurricane Ivan, and the developers of the so-called-subdivision next door put in a chain link fence , which later had Hurricane Katrina damage. I have since planted bamboo.