Cutting grass, plants, and... oops!

I did an hour or so of weeding most mornings last week, before it got too hot. Dan cut some of the 'lawn' about ten days ago, and yesterday morning I decided to try and finish it, so it's reasonably tidy before we go to the UK for a month. There was a definite improvement, here's how it looked after I'd cut the far end:



And here's how it looked in August after over a month with no work on it:



So that was fine. But one of the problems with our garden is that there are a lot of prickly plants with rather thick stems which grow at a vast rate during the summer. I'm not quite sure how, with no water, but evidently they're acclimatised fully.

It's not good for the lawnmower to go over them, so I decided to cut the last few of these using the secateurs before finishing the mowing.

Alas for my carelessness. I didn't notice that part of the lawnmower cable was caught in one of these plants. It's a white cable rather than an orange one, and it was a particularly dirty section. Besides which, I was tired. So I was snipping away without really noticing what I was doing, when I was startled by a big spark leaping from the secateurs. I dropped them instantly, and noticed a click at the same time as the earth leakage trip device tripped. Yes, I had cut half-way through a live cable...

Oops.

So I am very thankful to be alive. Thankful for the trip device which Richard bought a couple of years ago, just in case I ran over the cable with the lawnmower. I doubt if he thought I might cut it with secateurs, though! I reassure myself that I was also wearing trainers with rubbery soles, and that I was only holding the plastic handles of the secateurs. But even so, it was quite a shock. In the emotional sense, that is. I didn't actually feel anything.

Later that morning Richard bought some connectors that will enable him to mend the cable, but obviously I couldn't do any more lawnmowing at the time. Which was just as well, since about half an hour later we had some thunder and a bit more rain.